France announced, on Wednesday, September 17, that it has selected the Iranian director Jafar Panahi's Palme d'Or-winning drama It Was Just an Accident as its submission to the Academy Awards.
Panahi, who has spent much of the last 15 years either under house arrest, banned from travel or incarcerated, made It Was Just an Accident like his previous films, in his native Iran without government permission. It Was Just an Accident is Panahi's first film since he was released from jail two years ago, following a hunger strike.
He edited the film in France, co-financed it with a French company and, for the first time in more than a decade, traveled out of Iran to premiere the film in May at the Cannes Film Festival. There, it won the festival's top award and was acquired by Neon, which is planning an awards campaign.
"Let us join forces," Panahi said when accepting the Palme d'Or. "No one should dare tell us what kind of clothes we should wear, what we should do or what we should not do. The cinema is a society. Nobody is entitled to tell what we should or refrain from doing."
It Was Just an Accident is a revenge drama in which a group of former prisoners find the man they think could have been their torturer in prison. Yet because they were blindfolded while jailed, they struggle to be sure. Panahi drew from his own experience imprisoned in Tehran. "It was the experience of all these people I met in prison, mixed with my own perception and experience," Panahi said in an interview in Cannes. "The fact of never seeing the face of your interrogator is everyone’s experience."
The selection gives an Oscar pathway to a film that Iran was certain not to select itself. Only countries can make submissions for the Academy Awards best international category, a process that has drawn criticism for allowing authoritarian regimes to dictate which films are eligible for one of the most contested Oscars.
A year ago, Germany submitted The Seed of the Sacred Fig by Panahi's friend and countryman, Mohammad Rasoulof. In April, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tweaked its rules to allow filmmakers with refugee or asylum status to be represented by a country not their own.
France selected Panahi's film over several shortlisted films including Richard Linklater's French-language ode to the New Wave, Nouvelle Vague, Rebecca Zlotowski's A Private Life and the animated feature Arco. In recent years, France has sometimes been slammed for its choices. It passed over Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall in 2023, though it was nominated for best picture, and skipped Céline Sciamma's acclaimed 2019 drama Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
Despite having one of the most robust and respected film industries, France hasn't won the international Oscar since 1993 with Indochine.
The 98th Academy Awards will be presented on March 15, 2026, in Los Angeles.