It Was Just An Accident : A Screenplay

by Michael Powers

64 pages, Paperback

Published January 19, 2026

About the author

Raised in a small Midwestern farming community, Michael left home at twenty to explore the world. After spending most of the ’70s in the United States Air Force, he earned an MBA and went to work in corporate finance. Twenty years later, his interest in the way people live, love, and work led him to change careers. Today Michael travels extensively as a performance coach for small businesses. He’s lived in eight states and traveled to forty countries in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. His interests include medical technology, international affairs, and global finance. Michael believes the true measure of a person or group can be determined by observing how they act in a crisis.

Reviews

[Ross Bonaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

It Was Just an Accident marks Jafar Panahi’s first narrative feature in quite some time, and it’s been a bit since a Panahi film hasn’t been a docufiction starring Panahi himself. Yet It Was Just an Accident proves that Panahi has only gotten better as a screenwriter with his latest, which Panahi has stated is in honor of the Iranian political prisoners that he became friends with during his own time of imprisonment. Through It Was Just an Accident, Panahi asks questions about revenge, how societies are supposed to move forward after particularly dark times, and the lengths people will go to when pushed to the brink. But maybe most impressive is how Panahi does this in a film that’s also surprisingly funny in its own dark way.

More than any other nominee on this list — and quite frankly, most of the nominees that have ever been in this category — It Was Just an Accident is a film that feels like it could’ve only been written by Panahi. The filmmaker has always excelled at presenting Iranian culture, and considering his own time in the prison system for making his great films, it’s hard to imagine anyone having as much empathy, passion, and humor about this situation as Panahi does. It’s absurd, but also based under horrifying circumstances that have very real consequences, and Panahi handles all of that beautifully. If anything, It Was Just an Accident deserved far more than just two nominations at this year’s Oscars.