“I can’t do anything else but make films,” he said simply, when asked how he remains steadfast despite bans, interrogations, and imprisonment. “That’s who I am as a filmmaker. Despite the challenges I’ve faced, including bans and imprisonment, I remain committed to continuing my work.”
Panahi’s belief in the liberty of cinema is not theoretical, it is lived. His career has unfolded under severe restrictions that would have silenced most artists. Instead, he turned limitation into language. His early films, The Circle, Crimson Gold, The White Balloon, are anchored in sharp social observation, often centered on those whose voices are stifled within Iranian society. “As a social filmmaker, I find my inspiration and material in the society in which I live,” he explained. “My goal is to bring these realities to the forefront, to give voice to the marginalized.”
His latest film, however, takes him into new artistic territory. It Was Just an Accident departs from the stillness that defined his earlier work, much of it shot during periods when he was under house arrest or subject to movement restrictions. “With this film, the story and my position behind the camera called for a different rhythm, one that is faster, with more ellipses,” he said. This shift has resonated with global audiences, helping the film transcend its origins to connect emotionally and universally. In Marrakech, the reaction was proof that Panahi’s cinema, rooted in Iranian reality, speaks fluently across cultures.
Awards, too, have followed him across borders: the Golden Lion in Venice, the Golden Bear in Berlin, multiple festival tributes. But Panahi views these accolades with characteristic humility. “Winning these prestigious awards is an honor,” he told the audience, “but what means the most to me is being able to share my films with audiences around the world and see how they react to them.”
One of the most poignant moments of the conversation came when he reflected on retrieving his awards from Iran’s Museum of Cinema after his first imprisonment. “It didn’t make sense to keep them there,” he said. “They are now displayed in my home. The awards are a reminder of my perseverance in the face of adversity.”
Throughout his body of work, Panahi has embraced a cinematic style that blurs fiction and reality, revealing the fractures, and humor, of everyday life. He sees this duality as inherently human. “No matter how tragic or serious the experiences we go through in life, there is always an element of humor and laughter,” he said. “Maintaining that balance creates a more authentic and engaging cinematic experience.”
Even his famous cinéma-vérité pivot in The Mirror, where the young actress suddenly abandons the film mid-scene, was born from this instinct. “It was not scripted, it was a spontaneous moment I chose to incorporate,” he recalled. “By blurring the lines between fiction and reality, I aimed to create a more credible, believable cinematic experience.”
What emerges from Panahi’s reflections is a portrait of an artist who sees cinema not as escape, but as moral responsibility. He films because he must. He films because, even under restriction, the act of bearing witness is its own form of freedom.
In Marrakech, as It Was Just an Accident prepared to meet its audience, Panahi’s message was unmistakable: censorship may confine the body, but it cannot contain imagination. His work continued to travel, to touch audiences, to cross borders he himself could not.
“Cinema always finds a way to speak,” he said. And through Jafar Panahi, it spoke louder than ever.