For the first time in over two decades, acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi spoke to the press at the Cannes Film Festival — not remotely from house arrest in Tehran but as a free man. At the press conference for his competition film It Was Just an Accident, Panahi reflected on his long-awaited return to the Croisette and the weight of representing those who remain silenced in Iran.

This year’s Cannes marks Panahi’s first appearance at the festival since 2003, when Crimson Gold won the Un Certain Regard prize.

Panahi has only recently been able to travel, after, in February 2023, he was released from prison, following a hunger strike. A 2010 conviction, which banned him from travel as well as from filmmaking, was overturned. Suddenly, Panahi could work and move as he wished.

“It took some time for me to get back on my feet and get back to work,” said Panahi. “And this film [It Was Just An Accident] is the result.”

It Was Just an Accident is one of his most politically direct works to date. Filmed in secret in Iran and featuring unveiled female characters in defiance of the country’s hijab law, the movie follows a group of former state prisoners who debate whether to take revenge on the man who tortured them.

“In a way, I’m not the one who made this film. It’s the Islamic Republic that made this film, because they put me in prison,” Panahi told THR in a long-ranging interview ahead of the film’s premiere. “Maybe once they see this film, they will realize they shouldn’t put artists in prison…maybe if they want to stop us being so subversive, they should stop putting us in jail.”

In the press conference, Panahi said his films are “always inspired by the environment I find myself in,” and before prison, his environment was Iranian society but that “once you’ve been sent to prison, inevitably you are influenced and impacted by what you observe and what you see.”

One of the film’s stars, Mariam Afshari, said film is “a way to show us what we are going through, our struggle.”

The film’s naturalistic style and quiet tension recall Panahi’s earlier work — including The Circle and Offside — and stand in contrast to the more self-reflexive, constrained projects he made while officially banned from working, such as This Is Not a Film and Taxi. But though it eschews overt autobiography, its themes of imprisonment, trauma, and resistance resonate deeply with the director’s personal history.

Panahi recalled being held in abysmal conditions in prison, in a 5 by 8 foot cell, “where I hardly have room to lie down or walk around. To go to the toilet I had to ring a bell,” he said. “I was allowed to go to the toilet 2-3 times a day. To go out of my cell, I had to have my eyes blindfolded. Only in the toilet could you remove the blindfold.”

During his imprisonment, Panahi said, he was constantly interrogated, often for 8 hours a day. “Once, it was time for prayer and my interrogator went out to prayer and then came back to the interrogation.”

But Panahi said many, many others suffered far more. He noted his co-screenwriter has been sent back to prison. “It’s the Iranian person who has spent the past 40 years in captivity,” he noted.

Despite fighting decades of censorship, abuse and an official ban, Panahi said he never thought of giving up.

“During my 20-year ban, even my closest friends had given up hope that I would ever make films again,” Panahi said. “But I looked for solutions, I said to myself I didn’t know how to do anything else…I can’t change a lightbulb, I can’t work a screwdriver. I don’t know how to do anything except make films.”

Like the films made during his official ban, It Was Just An Accident was made in secret, without the approval of the Iranian regime.

The film’s premiere in Cannes on Tuesday drew a rapturous reception, and an 8-minute standing ovation, with few dry eyes in the house. Panahi delivered a moving speech, paying tribute to the many Iranian directors, actors, and activists still imprisoned or banned from working in the wake of the Femme Liberté protests.

Whatever the response of the Iranian regime to his new film, Panahi said he intends to keep up the fight.

“I behave just like other Iranians, I’m not a special case in any matter. The Iranian women are forbidden to go out without a headscarf but still they do so,” he said, “I’m not doing anything more heroic. As soon as I finish my work here I will go back to Iran, the next day. And I will ask myself what’s my next film going to be.”