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ABC News
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Jafar Panahi comes to Sydney Film Festival at the last minute to open Palme-d'Or-winning film It Was Just An Accident
When I was first told that celebrated Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was heading to Sydney for the Australian premiere of his latest film, It Was Just an Accident, it was so hush-hush he wasn't even named. I had to guess it was him from an oblique hint. Why all the secrecy? Because Panahi, a hero of world cinema, has been persecuted by the Iranian government, serving time in prison and under house arrest for daring to shoot his "social" films, as he calls them. Banned at home, they often feature non-professional actors and detail the intricate complexities of life in the theocratic republic. It's only very recently that Panahi has been allowed to leave the country, including to pick up the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d'Or, for It Was Just an Accident in May. It was a tenuous détente, no doubt reached because of the high esteem in which Panahi is held globally. This is why Sydney Film Festival didn't want to risk endangering Panahi by announcing the visit. Instead, he appeared onstage at the State Theatre during the opening night speeches to thunderous applause. Two days later, we sit down together with a translator over coffee at the Park Royal Darling Harbour, to discuss why his thought-provoking films are worth risking his freedom. Panahi is wearing his trademark black, including shades, indoors. "When you are in pain over something and it is tickling at you, you say, 'I must make a movie,'" Panahi says of his inescapable commitment to many causes. "Everything is happening from a simple accident, and then you have a duty of care. You are not separated from your movie." Simple accidents they may be, but Panahi takes these intense moments of personal experience and spins them into intriguing morality plays that rattle the bars holding Iranian citizens back. "The changes I feature are borne out of society," says the filmmaker, who was mentored by Iranian New Wave leading light Abbas Kiarostami. He has long followed the evolution of women's rights in Iran. His third feature, The Circle (2000), addresses access to abortions and sex work. Six years later, his joyous Offside is centred on plucky young women who flout the ban on attending a World Cup qualifying match. The hijab-law-rejecting protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini broke out during Panahi's second, and most recent, stint in prison — this time alongside several fellow political prisoners. It was 2022, with Panahi's self-starring feature, No Bears, debuting at the Venice Film Festival in his absence. "Bits and pieces of the news would come to us, but we really didn't know what the people on the street were experiencing," Panahi says. A strange turn of events would allow him a closer look, when an insect bite sparked a persistent skin problem. "The doctor in jail couldn't really help," Panahi recalls. "I needed to see a specialist. I had to request this for two or three months." Eventually, he was placed in handcuffs and bundled in the back of a van with darkened windows to attend the specialist. "They didn't want me to see anything, but I could, through the front windshield," he notes of his stolen glimpse at the protests. "I could see that the city has already changed." Now, Panahi says he cannot make another film in which all of the women on the street are wearing a hijab. "I would be telling a lie," he says. "What am I supposed to do when the politicians are running behind for 20 years?" Panahi is heartened that audiences worldwide have embraced his portraits of a nation in flux, including the complete celebration of his work at the Sydney Film Festival leading up to the local debut of It Was Just an Accident. It screens alongside all of his previous features in Jafar Panahi: Cinema in Rebellion. The new feature is drawn from Panahi's experience of interrogation, after being held in solitary confinement during his first stretch inside. It poses the question: what would you do if you were confronted with the man you think was your interrogator? Would you demand answers? Show mercy? Or opt for revenge? He says the best part of being free again and able to travel, however risky, is sitting with audiences as they experience the film. "The Iranian government put a distance between us and the viewers," Panahi says. "They didn't allow us to make that connection. But now I can sit with them and see which part of the movie works and which is not OK." After all he has been through, you'd forgive Panahi if he walked away from his home country. But — as with a beautiful moment in No Bears where he, playing a version of himself, stands on the border with Turkey — he has no intention of doing so. "I didn't put my foot on the other side of the border," he says. "I came back. I do not want to exchange my life for anything else. Life in Iran is not difficult for me. Life outside is. I cannot live anywhere else." Editing It Was Just an Accident in France for three months was too long away for Panahi. "Every day I said, 'I cannot survive here. I cannot continue in here. I must go home.'" It Was Just an Accident marks its Australian debut at the Sydney Film Festival on Friday, May 13, alongside a retrospective of Panahi's films.
The Guardian
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Life of Chuck review – unmoving Stephen King schmaltz
As prestigious as it might sound to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes or the Golden Lion at Venice, the surest indicator of Oscar recognition has become victory at the far less fancy, far more mainstream Toronto film festival. There isn't a jury-based award, instead there's one decided by an audience vote and, far more often than not, their picks have lined up with those of the Academy. Since 2008, only one People's Choice award winner hasn't then gone on to either take home or be nominated for the best picture Oscar, and while the picks haven't always been the greatest (hello, Jojo Rabbit, Belfast and Three Billboards), they've indicated a broad, crowd-rousing appeal. Last year, despite predictions that Anora or Conclave might triumph, out of nowhere the far less buzzy, and, at that point, distribution-less Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck triumphed, a win that preceded a deal with awards-securing outfit Neon and, now, a confidently positioned early summer release. Such a victory, combined with a sense-assaulting marketing campaign highlighting words like 'life-affirming', 'profound', 'celebration' and 'magical', would have you believe that something rather special is about to burrow its way into your heart, a feeling of wonder set to overwhelm (one quote claims it to be 'It's a Wonderful Life for today'). But try as writer-director Mike Flanagan might, there's something coldly unmoving about it all, a disjointed and dry-eyed tearjerker that never rises above Instagram caption philosophy. Flanagan has become the unofficial adapter-in-chief of King's work, having made three films while working on two TV shows based on his writing (the pair have both expressed deep admiration for the other on multiple occasions). It tracks given Flanagan's interest in both scares and sentiment (his non-King shows like The Haunting of Hill House have balanced them well) although there's yet to be a real slam-dunk among them. Like many of the more faithful adaptations, both Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep have their share of effective moments (the latter boasting a particularly terrifying turn from Rebecca Ferguson) but they get dragged down having to untangle King's often baffling explanations, fumbling overly convoluted plots that might have worked better on the page (Flanagan's best film remains his stripped-back King-less debut, the barnstorming home invasion thriller Hush). The Life of Chuck has the unmistakeable feeling of back-of-drawer King, familiar ideas given a quick, yet incomplete, dust-off for a late-stage novella (it's one of three stories from the 2020 collection If It Bleeds, the last adaptation being Mr Harrigan's Phone, a similarly reheated misfire). It's a trio of tales, all centered around Chuck, played as an adult by Tom Hiddleston, who initially appears on a strange billboard seen by Chiwetel Ejiofor's confused teacher (Ejiofor gives one of the film's few standout performances). In the first, most effective, section, the world is crashing to a halt with natural disasters forcing people to examine their lives and lost loves, hoping to find a hand to hold as everything fades to black. Tributes to Chuck haunt them, as if his death somehow means more than theirs, from posters to TV commercials to his face inside their windows. In the middle section we get to actually meet him, as an everyman accountant, life narrated by Nick Offerman in one of the film's more annoyingly mannered touches. He engages in a rather mortifying dance sequence before we go back for the final act, encountering him as a child. It's a film about life and death and love and family and dreams but only ever in the most simplistic of fridge magnet ways (it could have been called The Live Laugh Love of Chuck), urging and insisting us to feel something without ever giving us enough for any of it to sink in. The tease of the storytelling, hinting at a great, earth-shattering reveal, masks a rather empty space at its centre, and when details of the 'twist' arrive, if one could even call it that given how messy the plotting gets, it turns a feelgood film into an odd and, from one viewpoint, sinister tale of narcissism and revenge (a thriller using similar components could have been far more entertaining). The big problem is that we never really get to know or understand Chuck; we're mostly just told about him via voiceover (he contains multitudes, allegedly!) and we're expected to figure him, and the meaning of life, out from faux-profound sermons about math and the cosmos. Hiddleston has very little to do but dance and we spend more time with Benjamin Pajak as a younger Chuck, who does an effective job at charming us through well-trodden coming-of-age scenes. Flanagan elsewhere relies a little too heavily on his go-to troupe of actors (Mark Hamill, wife Kate Siegel, Samantha Sloyan), which leads to some distracting miscasts. I'm not really sure what to take from The Life of Chuck, a solidly directed yet stilted, stop-start piece of film-making that reveres a lesser, little-known work of King but doesn't really explain to us why. The final scene, intended to hit us with a cascade of emotion, is abrupt and unsatisfying, frustration overriding any impulse to cry (the end-of-days melancholy of the first section is close to piercing through the most) and we're left feeling empty. Life is full of meaning but The Life of Chuck struggles to find any. The Life of Chuck is out in US cinemas on 6 June, Australian cinemas on 21 August and in the UK on 22 August
Vogue
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Here's the State of the 2026 Oscar Race
Almost a week after the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, with the French Riviera showcase's most prestigious awards now presented, press conferences and photo calls completed, and all those illegal naked dresses returned to fashion houses, Hollywood's top publicists are hard at work. Next on the agenda? Crafting Oscar campaigns for all of those who came out on top. Yes, I realize the 98th Academy Awards are over nine months away, and a lot can and will change between now and then—but, revisit the nominees for the 2025 ceremony, and you'll remember just how pivotal Cannes can be. Last year's Palme d'Or winner, Anora, went on to secure the best-picture statuette, and two of its nine fellow nominees in the top category, Emilia Pérez and The Substance, also premiered at the festival. In best director, three of the five nominees debuted their film at Cannes (including Sean Baker, who won), and of the 20 acting nominees, over a third walked the Croisette before they landed on the Oscars red carpet. Two of them, Anora's Mikey Madison and Emilia Pérez's Zoe Saldaña, left with two of the four acting prizes on offer. It's a truly staggering showing for a single festival, especially considering how early it falls in the awards season calendar. It's difficult to imagine this year's Cannes cohort—which includes many quieter, more contemplative films compared to the hoopla of Anora, The Apprentice, Emilia Pérez, and The Substance—having quite the same impact on the Oscar race, but still, there are plenty of releases that could very well dominate across the board, from best picture and the writing and directing line-ups to the highly competitive acting races. Below, a rundown of the releases currently surging, as well as those which have faced setbacks following a more muted Cannes debut than expected. It Was Just an Accident's Palme d'Or win could take it into the best-picture line-up
Free Malaysia Today
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Free Malaysia Today
Iran silent as dissident director wins Cannes' top prize
Jafar Panahi has been banned from filmmaking since 2010 and jailed multiple times. (AP pic) TEHRAN : Iranian authorities offered no reaction today after dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize for his political drama. Panahi, 64, was awarded the Palme d'Or last night for 'It Was Just an Accident' – a film in which five Iranians confront a man they believe tortured them in prison. A story inspired by his own time in detention, it had led critics' polls throughout the week at Cannes. The win has so far been met with silence from Iran's government and ignored by the state broadcaster, which instead focused on a state-aligned 'Resistance' film festival. The conservative Fars news agency suggested the jury's choice was politically motivated, saying it was 'not uninfluenced by the political issues surrounding Jafar Panahi inside Iran'. Reformist newspapers Etemad, Shargh and Ham Mihan reported the win on their websites but did not feature it on their front pages, possibly due to the timing of the announcement. Panahi, who has been banned from filmmaking since 2010 and jailed multiple times, addressed the Cannes audience with a call for national unity. He confirmed plans to return to Iran immediately. Asked last night if he feared arrest, he said: 'Not at all. Tomorrow we are leaving.' This marks only the second time an Iranian director has won the Palme d'Or, after the late Abbas Kiarostami received the honour for 'Taste of Cherry' in 1997. Both directors faced bans throughout their careers.
The National
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Late Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina overcame bomb threats to become first Arab to win Cannes Palme d'Or
In May 1975, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina became the first Arab and African to win the Palme d'Or, the top honour at the Cannes Film Festival, for Chronicles of the Years of Fire. It was not just a moment of cinematic triumph for the Algerian filmmaker – who has died aged 95, his family said on Friday – but a testament to his resilience. After all, the screening of Chronicles of the Years of Fire was rife with tension. Lakhdar-Hamina was facing an assassination attempt as the festival received a series of bomb threats for giving the film and the filmmaker a platform. But what was it about Chronicles that caused such an uproar and made it one of the most politically charged titles to screen at Cannes? The historical epic is set between the 1930s and 1954, drawing a trajectory of the events that led to the Algerian War of Independence. The film is segmented into six chapters, showing Algeria's road to revolution through the perspective of Ahmed, a peasant who gradually becomes involved in the nationalist struggle against colonial rule. Each chapter represents a phase in Algeria's political awakening, beginning with drought, poverty and colonial exploitation before culminating in armed resistance and the first flares of the War of Algerian Independence. Ahmed's personal transformation, along with the experiences of his village, brilliantly depict this blooming political consciousness. As such, Chronicles of the Years of Fire is a portrait of the brutality of colonialism, showing how revolt was a natural result from years of repression and suffering. Yet, Lakhdar-Hamina made not only a political film, but also a poetic one – with tastefully paced scenes and tableauxesque shots that capture the communal and cultural significance of the moment. Lakhdar-Hamina drew from his personal background to make Chronicles. The filmmaker was born in 1934 to a peasant family in M'Sila. He studied agriculture and law in French universities. His father was kidnapped, tortured and killed by the French Army during the Algerian War. In 1958, Lakhdar-Hamina himself deserted the French Army and joined the Algerian resistance in Tunisia. Revolution and the anticolonial struggle was a lived experience, deftly communicated through Chronicles of the Years of Fire. The political implications of the film were towering for its time. The Algerian War had ended a mere 13 years before Chronicles was screened at Cannes. The conflict marked the end of 130 years of French colonial rule in Algeria, but it was signified by a reshaping of France's global position and identity. This was a change some segments of French society were not particularly happy with. The film exposed these ruptures, particularly when veterans of Organisation armee secrete – a far-right French paramilitary and terrorist group that opposed Algeria's independence – threatened to bomb the festival and kill Lakhdar-Hamina. Thankfully, the assassination attempt was not carried out, and Lakhdar-Hamina received his award with the pomp and ceremony he deserved. Chronicles of the Years of Fire still stands as both a cinematic feat and a political one. 'What prevails is the motivation for the Algerian War,' Lakhdar-Hamina has been quoted as saying in an article that marks the 50th anniversary of the film on the Cannes Film Festival website. 'For young people who have not known this era, this would help them understand, while older people will recognise the truth in what is being told.' Chronicles of the Years of Fire has endured, as Lakhdar-Hamina intended, as 'a film against injustice, against humiliation', while also being a sharp historical resource. It shows how the Algerian War was not merely a fight for political freedom and land, but also a struggle to reclaim cultural identity and dignity. Its legacy looms alongside that of the war, which continues to inform relations between France and Algeria, as well as conversations around postcolonial identity and memory.
