This year’s Palme d’Or winner, “It Was Just an Accident,” will open the New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF).
Filmed in secret by dissident Iranian director, Jafar Panahi, the movie has become a film festival favourite following a triumphant win at Cannes. It’s run of appearances will continue at the NZIFF, where it will feature as the opening screening on July 31st.
“Jafar Panahi’s film is cinema at its boldest. It challenges the notion of revenge through compassion. It is the kind of cinema that stays with you,” said Paolo Bertolin, NZIFF Artistic Director.
“I am excited that New Zealand audiences will be among the first in the world to see it!”
The announcement follows Panahi’s appearance on the red carpet at the Sydney Film Festival’s opening gala on Wednesday. He was revealed to be joining the Melbourne Film Festival in August the following day.
“It Was Just an Accident” follows a 14-year ban from making films for Panahi, handed out as a result of him speaking to the press and leaving Iran for “propaganda against the state,” which was lifted in April 2023.
The film follows a group of former political prisoners who kidnap a man whom they believe to be their former interrogator and torturer. As the director said in an interview with Variety, the film was inspired by his experiences in an Iranian prison.
His latest Cannes win means Panahi now has the rare distinction of having won the top prize at all three major European film festivals, after taking Berlin’s Golden Bear for “Taxi” in 2015 and the Golden Lion at Venice for “The Circle” in 2000.
Panahi’s film is just one of the films appearing at NZIFF that Bertolin says “speak powerfully to the moment we are living in.”
“They ask big questions, take risks, and remind us why cinema matters more than ever,” said Bertolin.
“Thanks to the exceptional work of the NZIFF programming team, we are shaping this year’s festival as a chance to experience that urgency, curiosity and beauty together on the big screen.”
For more information on the NZIFF, click here.