"Art will always win"
Jafar Panahi Won The 2025 Palm D'Or for His Film "It Was Just an Accident." The Iranian Regime Has Punished Him for His Cinematic Art, Forcing Him to Create Illegally in Iran.
To show my appreciation for your steadfast understanding, patience and support as my inflamed and spastic back muscles heal, I am offering 60% off forever on new paid subscriptions and upgrades until May 31.
I want to celebrate Harvard University for not bending its knee to the Mump-Nazi Reich. Until May 31, I am offering faculty, staff and students with an .edu e-mail 50% off forever.
I hope more educational institutions, especially those in higher education, learn from Harvard’s and history’s example of colleges and universities remaining bold against tyranny and autocracy.
The 2025 Palme D’Or went to Iranian director Jafar Panahi and his film It Was Just an Accident. The film that Panahi made illegally tells the story of Iranian citizens who seek vengeance on a prison warden they believed abused them while in his custody.
Panahi first won recognition from Cannes in 1995. His film The White Balloon, which can be watched via streaming on The Criterion Channel, won the Camera D’Or and International Critics Award. He and his work are often critical of the Iranian regime. Because of this, Panahi has faced house arrest, a travel ban and imprisonment.
His most recent imprisonment came in July 2022 after he tried to gain information about a fellow director’s incarceration. In addition to this unjust punishment, the Iranian regime has also banned Panahi from filmmaking for 20 years. Under house arrest, he appealed the judgement and continued to make films regardless.
That boundary only had Panahi create prolific and richer cinematic art often using guerilla filmmaking techniques. Films he created after that sentence include This Is Not a Film that he partially made with his iPhone during house arrest. This film documented his life as he appealed his 6-year imprisonment and 20-year filmmaking ban. You can watch his documentary with English subtitles below.
To submit This Is Not a Film to Cannes, he smuggled his documentary in a USB-drive hidden in a cake. Other films he made after This Is Not a Film include Closed Curtain and Taxi. Panahi’s artistry and creativity are laudable and inspiring.
His passion to artistically survive, share his thoughts and dissent in such circumstances should galvanize every U.S. citizen and especially U.S. artists of any genre. Though the United States has not risen to the authoritarian rule Panahi and other Iranians live under (Panahi refuses to live in exile), the U.S. government and the U.S. electorate have by their own uninformed or selfish choice embraced fascism.
Recognizing the earlier words of Robert De Niro, Cannes jury member Jeremy Strong said the jury’s choice of It’s Not an Accident concurs with the stated morals of Robert De Niro and the impact and power of art to move and transform people.
Juliette Binoche who served as this year’s Cannes jury president said of It’s Not an Accident and Panahi:
The film springs from a feeling of resistance, survival, which is absolutely necessary today. Art will always win. What is human will always win. As actors, directors and people who work in art, we can speak out in public on important issues and transform the world.
We are in a world ruled by revenge, violence, and this film for someone who has had this experience of violence in his life, the fact that one can talk about this change within the film, this change which is not revenge, the idea is you can listen and not necessarily want to kill someone or rough them up. The film holds out huge hope and we were fortunate to have this movie in competition. So, we can talk about these matters. You have to have a paradigm shift of looking at things. We’re in the mud of violence, in the sludge of what is human…
I can only speak for myself, but living in the United States after November 5 has created a swirl of multiple emotions: demoralization, aggravation, anger, terror. Some U.S. citizens remain apathetic, uninformed or still refuse to acknowledge this dismantling of our Constitutional democratic republic we have taken for granted. I work alongside a few of them.
What keeps me going is the work and community of fellow artists like Panahi who can still create beautiful and bold art living under extreme and dehumanizing conditions. I’m sure I don’t register as a concern for the MAGA-Nazi Reich, but if I ever do, I pray I hold strong to my artistic and moral center. Like Sylvia Plath wrote, ““I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still.”