It Was Just an Accident (2025)

 

Director: Jafar Panahi. Cast: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi. 103 min. Mystery/Comedy.

• You live in a dictatorship, and finally get your hands on a man who may have tortured you in prison for years. He is yours. You have full power over him. What will you do to him?
• This is the setting of Jafar Panahi's most recent political drama, who won the celebrated Palm d'Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. But how this film came into existence is a story on its own. Panahi was arrested in 2009 for participating in Iran's "Green Movement", and sentenced to a 20-year ban on filmmaking. That was no hindrance to the defiant Panahi, who kept devising ingenious methods to bypass his sentence and continue with his passion (the title of his farcical 2011 documentary, This is Not a Film, should give you an idea). Based on Panahi's own experiences in prison, IWJAA was secretly filmed in Tehran, and the film's actresses illegally performed without Iran's mandatory hijab. Towards the end of filming, the cast and crew were almost discovered and arrested. Eventually, the film was smuggled out of Iran and delivered to Cannes.
• The subject of "what to do with your ex-captor" has been discussed in several films, some of the most prominent being Roman Polasnki's Death and the Maiden (1994) and the Argentinian Oscar-winner, The Secret in their Eyes (2009). But Panahi's film takes a different approach: he presents his moral dilemma as ... a comedy. Because if you believe the cycle of violence must be broken and the response to torture is not revenge, then the cinematic translation of that notion is comedy - no? 
• That said, the film has its darker moments towards the end, and wisely leaves it up to the viewer to decide whether our protagonists made the right choice. Watch this thought-provoking movie with a group: it's a discussion-maker.

MoGo rating: 7/10

One Battle After Another (2025)

 

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson. Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Benicio Del Toro. 161 min. Thriller/Comedy.

• Paul Thomas Anderson has been one of the most influential directors of our time. His Boogie Nights (1997) was perfectly able to capture the '70s mood, and his There Will be Blood (2007), The Master (2012) and Phantom Thread (2017) were all among New York Times' recent list of "100 Best Movies of the 21st Century" (TWBB coming in at 3rd place). The curious point is that Oscar-wise, P.T. Anderson has always gone home empty-handed. With his new movie, that may change this year.
• The appropriately-timed One Battle After Another happens in a not-too-distant future, where in a caricature setting, extreme liberalism is coming into a final clash with extreme conservatism. Vigilante groups are no longer being silent towards systematic xenophobia, and secret ultra-right societies are mounting counter-attacks to squash the resistance. Leonardo DiCaprio is one anarchist, who with his daughter (newcomer Chase Infiniti) is on the run from Col. Steven Lockjaw (with an unforgettable performance by Sean Penn), who himself has questionable motives in his pursuit of the father-daughter pair. Saying anymore would dampen the fun of watching this strangely plotted but very fluid and engaging movie. 
• OBAA will be this year's major Oscar contender. While Anderson will finally break his spell in both Best Picture and Best Director categories, Penn as Lockjaw is also a lock-in (no pun intended) for his third Oscar, and surprise wins may go to Infiniti, DiCaprio, or Benicio Del Toro. This may sound like blasphemy, but this was the first time I "believed" in DiCaprio's performance; he felt like a real, unexaggerated character. And you'll find how powerful this movie's soundtrack is, especially after a second viewing, and especially during that incredibly-shot climactic car chase scene at the end. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.    

MoGo's rating: 9/10