Iranian director Jafar Panahi has won the Palme d’Or at the 78th Cannes Film Festival with A Simple Accident. It’s a political and poetic film about the excesses of the Islamic State.
A big favorite at the Cannes Film Festival, A Simple Accident, one of 22 films in competition, was finally awarded the Palme d’Or after 12 days of competition. It succeeds Anora, a fake Cinderella story by Sean Baker, winner of the Palme d’Or in 2024.
Jafar Panahi, its director, threatened in his native Iran and banned from practicing his profession, had to work underground to make this road movie which, like the parable evoked by jury president Juliette Binoche about art, “provokes, questions, and upsets.”
This award clearly illustrates the political tone of this 78th edition, at a time of rising extremism around the world.
Resistance celebrated
In awarding Jafar Panahi’s 11th feature film, the jury sought, according to its president Juliette Binoche, to honor “a gesture that is above all artistic and human, and therefore eminently political.” She continued, “This is a film that emerges from a place of resistance and survival, which is completely necessary today. Fifteen years ago, Jafar was in prison, but art will always win.”
It was in the jails of the Islamic Republic that director Jafar Panahi found the inspiration for his latest film, which deals with arbitrariness without putting himself in the frame, a first in his filmography.
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Featured image: © Cannes Film Festival
