Overview
When you've just won one of the international film world's most-prestigious prizes, where do you head next? For Iranian writer/director Jafar Panahi, who took home the Palme d'Or at 2025's Cannes Film Festival for his new feature It Was Just an Accident, this is the answer: a trip to Australia to attend Sydney Film Festival. His latest picture was already on the Harbour City event's program. The fest is also celebrating his entire body of work with its featured retrospective Jafar Panahi: Cinema in Rebellion. What better special guest, then, than the man himself?
"From Cannes to Australia" has been an ongoing theme of Sydney Film Festival's 2025 program announcements. See: its main lineup drop, adding Eddington to the bill, closing-night pick Splitsville, and a late round of newcomers primarily comprised of Cannes award-winners and hits that was revealed just two days in advance of the event raising its curtains. Panahi's surprise trip to Australia is the stuff of Festival Director and cinephile dreams, however. The filmmaker is already in Sydney, as SFF's Nashen Moodley announced to the opening-night crowd at the State Theatre on Wednesday, June 4.
There's launching with a bang, as every major film festival aims to — and then there's kicking things off with not just a highly anticipated opening-night pick (body-horror flick Together) but with this kind of news. Panahi attending fests around the world or even having any freedom at all has not been assured across his time as a filmmaker. Throughout his career, Iran's ruling regime has banned him from making movies, forbidden him from leaving his homeland, and placed him both under arrest and imprisonment.
Accordingly, the significance of Panahi being present at Sydney Film Festival cannot be understated. As he's made the reality of life in Iran today under censorship and oppression the focus of his pictures, persevering with his acts of resistance through cinema regardless of the repercussions that've come his way, the importance of Panahi's work has been clear to moviegoing audiences for decades.
His films have a long association with SFF, including across the fest's program whenever his new pictures drop and in a 2011 retrospective that also highlighted his compatriot Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig). That said, every single one of Panahi's features is playing at Sydney Film Festival in 2025, with the filmmaker set to introduce a number of retrospective sessions and also get chatting at a free talk at the event's Festival Hub.
It Was Just an Accident is part of SFF's official competition, and therefore in the running to collect another huge film festival prize. Indeed, Panahi's filmography is filled with award-winners, a term that applies to every feature that he's ever crafted. The White Balloon gave Panahi his first Cannes accolade, for best first film. Then 1997's The Mirror took home the Locarno International Film Festival's Golden Leopard, 2000's The Circle nabbed Venice's Golden Lion, 2003's Crimson Gold earned an Un Certain Regard prize back at Cannes and 2006's Offside collected a Silver Bear in Berlin.
More Cannes love came for 2011's This Is Not a Film (the Carrosse d'Or at the Director's Fortnight) and 2018's Three Faces (for best screenplay), plus more Berlin recognition for 2013's Closed Curtain (another Silver Bear) and 2015's Tehran Taxi (the Golden Bear), and more again from Venice for No Bears (a Special Jury Prize).
Sydney Film Festival 2025 takes place from Wednesday, June 4–Sunday, June 15 at various cinemas and venues around Sydney. For more information and tickets, head to the festival's website.