Panahi's Palme d'Or winner lands worldwide, with France sending it to the Oscars

Jafar Panahi's It Was Just an Accident is now in cinemas worldwide, and France has officially put it forward for Best International Feature at the 2026 Oscars. That is a very big swing for a film that was produced in secret, co-financed by France, and made by a director who has spent years working under Iranian restrictions. Panahi's latest project did not just win the Palme d'Or at Cannes in May. It also moved from festival triumph to global release, with one of the world's most prominent film industries backing it all the way to Oscar season.

That matters because this is not a normal release cycle. Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker with dozens of films to his name, most of them made illegally, could not even experience one of his own films with the public for 15 years because of a travel ban imposed by the Iranian authorities. At Cannes in May, he watched the film screen for the first time before an international audience and was moved to tears. He told RFI that seeing how the public and crew reacted, when they laughed and when they felt emotion, was fundamental for a filmmaker. In other words, this was not just a premiere. It was a return to the room where cinema actually happens.

The awards momentum is easy to see, but the stakes run deeper than trophies. On 24 May, Panahi won the Palme d'Or, the highest honour at Cannes, after delivering a speech that framed the film as part of a broader fight over expression and control.