Is There A Route To The Oscars For Jafar Panahi’s ‘It Was Just An Accident’ Following Palme D’Or Win?

As Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident was declared winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or on Saturday evening, one of the first questions from the Deadline team was: “Could it go to Oscars?”.

It’s an obvious question given the Oscar track record of recent Palme d’Or winners Anora, Anatomy of a Fall and Parasite.

However, it is unlikely that Iran’s Islamic Republic government will allow Panahi’s film to be put forward as the country’s submission for the 2026 Oscars.

Aside from Panahi’s outspoken stance against its stranglehold on democracy which has twice landed him in prison, the film is highly critical of Iran’s penal system on the back of his own firsthand experiences.

Billed as “a powerful statement for humanity” by Deadline critic Pete Hammond, It Was Just An Accident follows wrongfully incarcerated working-class people who seek revenge against the guard who tortured and berated them.

Iran has enjoyed success at the Academy Awards in the past with Asghar Farhadi winning the Best International Feature Film twice, for A Separation and The Salesman in 2012 and 2017 respectively.

However, in the light of the Women Life Freedom protests, Farhadi has left Iran and said he will not make a film there until the government embraces democracy.

Dissident filmmakers never get past the first post of being submitted.

Exiled Iranian director Mohamed Rasoulof enjoyed an awards season run with his film The Seed Of The Sacred Fig for the 2025 Oscars, but as the entry for Germany.

The film, which premiered at Cannes, winning the Jury Special Prize, was produced under the banner of Rasoulof’s Germany-based Run Way Pictures. The director is now based in Germany, having lived there on and off in the past.

With support out of France from co-producer Les Film Pelléas and distributor Memento Distribution, could Panahi’s film potentially go down a similar route as France’s entry?

With so many homegrown French titles vying for this slot too, it feels unlikely that France would sacrifice its entry for a non-French-language film.

The film is also co-produced by Luxembourgish company Bidibul Productions, could there be an angle there?

The other tried and tested awards run route for the picture could also be Neon, which acquired North American rights earlier this week.

It marks Neon’s sixth Palme d’Or winner acquisition in row, and the distributor has done Cannes victors proud in the awards race in the past.

It famously got behind Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, after it was snubbed as France’s submission for the 2024 Oscars.

Neon gave it a buzzy awards seasons run nonetheless which resulted in a Best Screenplay Academy Award, among a raft of other prizes.

In the backdrop, the Independent Iranian Filmmakers Association (IIFMA), representing exiled and dissident Iranian filmmakers, has called on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to reconsider its relationship with Iran’s government-controlled Farabi cinema org which currently oversees the country’s Oscar submission process.

There have also been separate calls in the past for AMPAS to create a Best International Feature Film category giving representation to exiled filmmakers, in a similar way to how the International Olympics Committee has gotten behind a refugee team made up of exiled sports people.

However, while Panahi’s daughter lives in Paris, the director has made it clear in past interviews that he has no desire to live outside of Iran on a permanent basis.

One way or another, we hope to see Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident among the awards season contenders later this year.