Jafar Panahi Wins Cannes Palme d’Or for ‘It Was Just an Accident’

Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi has won the Palme d’Or for best film for It Was Just an Accident at the 78th Cannes international film festival.

Panahi, who just a few years ago was imprisoned in Tehran and under a 20-year travel and work ban, returned triumphantly to Cannes, accepting his award from jury president (and vocal Panahi fan) Juliette Binoche.

Panahi’s film, his first since being released from prison in 2023, is a direct assault on Iran’s authoritarian regime. The thriller follows a former political prisoner who kidnaps a man he believes to be his torturer and then debates with other dissidents whether to kill or forgive him.

The win marks the sixth time in a row a film acquired by Neon for North America has won the Palme d’Or. Tom Quinn’s indie outfit kept its Cannes streak going by picking up It Was Just an Accident earlier this week.

With his Cannes win, Jafar Panahi has now completed the rare festival triple crown, winning the top prize at all three major European film festivals, following his Golden Lion win in Venice for The Circle (2000) and Berlin’s Golden Bear for Taxi (2015). Panahi is only the fourth director — after Henri-Georges Clouzot, Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Altman — to win the big three.

The 2025 Cannes jury included actors Halle Berry, Jeremy Strong and Italy’s Alba Rohrwacher; directors Dieudo Hamadi, Hong Sang-soo, Payal Kapadia and Carlos Reygadas; and French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani.

The festival got its own dramatic twist ending early on Saturday when a regional power outage shut down the electrical grid serving Cannes and much of the surrounding region. The outage, apparently caused by deliberate sabotage on the electrical infrastructure, disrupted early morning screenings and forced hotels, shops and cafes in the city to close.

But the festival was largely unaffected. The Palais, where the closing ceremony is held, switched to emergency power and carried on much as before.

Cannes had a particularly strong lineup this year, with no single film the overall frontrunner going into the awards.

Binoche began the ceremony by bestowing a special prize on Chinese director Bi Gan for Resurrection. Rohrwacher gave the Camera d’Or trophy for first feature to The President’s Cake director Hasan Hadi, who is the first Iraqi director to win a prize in Cannes.

John C. Reilly, in Cannes for the Un Certain Regard film Heads or Tails?, added a musical touch to the ceremony, breaking out into an English-language rendition of “La Vie en Rose” when presenting best screenplay prize to two-time Palme d’Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for the Belgian social drama Young Mothers.

Brazilian actor Wagner Moura took best actor for his starring role in The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s 1970s-set Brazilian political thriller. In a rare double award, Filho also took best director for the feature.

Newcomer Nadia Melliti beat out Jennifer Lawrence’s turn in Lynne Ramsay’s Die, My Love to take the best actress honor, playing the lead role in Hafsia Herzi’s Muslim lesbian coming-of-age story The Little Sister.

German director Mascha Schilinski won the Jury Prize for Sound of Falling, only her second film, an epic family drama set across four generations in the same rural farmhouse. She shared the honor with Spanish director Oliver Laxe for Sirat, a techno-infused apocalyptic drama set in the Moroccan desert.

A full list of winners follows:

Palme d’Or

Jafar Panahi for It Was Just an Accident

Grand Prix

Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value

Jury Prize

Mascha Schilinski for Sound of Falling and Oliver Laxe for Sirat (tie)

Best Director

Kleber Mendonça Filho for The Secret Agent

Best Screenplay

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for Young Mothers

Best Actress

Nadia Melliti for The Little Sister

Best Actor

Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent

Special Prize

Resurrection, dir. Bi Gan

Camera d’Or for Best First Film

The President’s Cake, dir: Hassan Hadi

Palme d’Or for Best Short Film

I’m Glad You’re Dead Now, dir: Tawfeek Barhom

Best Short Film Special Mention

Ali, dir. Adnan Al Rajeev

Un Certain Regard

Un Certain Regard Prize
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, dir. Diego Céspedes

Jury Prize
A Poet, dir. Simón Mesa Soto

Best Director
Once Upon a Time in Gaza, dir. Arab & Tarzan Nasser

Best Screenplay
Pillion, dir. Harry Lighton

Best Actress
I Only Rest in the Storm, dir. Pedro Pinho

Best Actor
Frank Dillane in Urchin, dir. Harris Dickinson

Caméra d’Or for best first film
The President’s Cake, dir. Hassan Hadi

Special Mention
My Father’s Shadow, dir. Akinola Davies Jr

La Cinef

First Prize
First Summer, dir. Heo Gayoung (KAFA, South Korea)

Second Prize
12 Moments Before the Flag-Raising Ceremony, dir. Qu Zhizheng (Beijing Film Academy, China)

Third Prize
Ginger Boy, dir. Miki Tanaka (ENBU Seminar, Japan); Winter in March, dir. Natalia Mirzoyan (Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia) (Tie)

The Higher Technical Commission for Sound and Images

CST Award for Best Young Female Technician
Éponine Momenceau, director of photography for Connemara, dir. Alex Lutz

CST Artist-Technician Award

Ruben Impens, Director of Photography, and Stéphane Thiébaut, Sound Mixer, for Alpha, dir. Julia Ducournau