Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi won the top prize, the Palme d'Or, at the Cannes Film Festival. He used his acceptance speech to call on his country to unite in the name of “freedom”.

The 64-year-old director's latest film, “It Was Just an Accident,” tells the story of five ordinary Iranians who encounter a man they believe tortured them in prison.

At the heart of this political and ironic drama is the moral dilemma faced by people when given the opportunity to take revenge on their oppressors.

Panahi drew on his own experience in prison to write the script.

“Let's put aside all the problems, all the differences. The most important thing right now is our country and the freedom of our country,” he told the VIP audience on the French Riviera.

The leading figure in Iran's “New Wave” cinema movement promised to return to Tehran after the Cannes festival, despite the risk of persecution.

Banned from making films since 2010 and imprisoned twice, Panahi said cinema should be a space for free expression.

“No one has the right to tell you what you should or should not do,” he told the audience.

When asked if he was worried after winning the prestigious Palme d'Or for his film, he replied: “Not at all. We're leaving tomorrow.”

Iran was rocked by the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests in 2022, sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly violating women's dress codes.

The demonstrations were quelled with repression, in which thousands were detained, according to the UN, and hundreds were shot dead by security forces, according to activists.

Among the other awards in Cannes, Brazilian Wagner Moura, best known for his role as Pablo Escobar in “Narcos,” won the award for best actor for his role in the police thriller “The Secret Agent.”

The film's director, Kleber Mendonça Filho, also won the award for best director, making it a successful evening for Brazil.

French actress Nadia Melli continued her fairy-tale two weeks in Cannes by winning the award for best actress.

Meliti, who was spotted on the street by a casting agent and had never appeared in a film before, plays a 17-year-old Muslim girl struggling with her homosexuality in Hafsia Herzi's “The Little Sister.”

Norwegian director Joachim Trier's “Sentimental Value,” a touching family drama that received a 19-minute standing ovation on May 22, won the second Grand Prix prize.

The closing ceremony on May 24 was the finale of a dramatic day in Cannes, during which the glamorous seaside resort suffered a power outage lasting more than five hours.

The outage blocked traffic lights and caused visitors and locals to scramble for cash as ATMs were down and restaurants could not accept card payments.

Local authorities said the outage was likely caused by arson at a substation and vandalism to a power pole.

German director Masha Shilinka joked that she had “difficulty writing her speech” due to the power outage while accepting the jury prize for her film “Sound of Falling.”

Panahi has won numerous awards at European film festivals and presented his debut film “The White Balloon” in Cannes in 1995, which won the award for best debut film.

The president of the Cannes 2025 jury, French actress Juliette Binoche, paid tribute to “It Was Just an Accident.”

"This is a film that was born out of a place of resistance, a place of survival, and I felt it was important to put it at the top today.

Art will always win, humanity will always win," she said after the ceremony.

Panahi has always refused to stop making films, and his efforts to smuggle them to foreign distributors and film festivals have become legendary.

A year after he was banned from making films for 20 years in 2010, he sent a documentary with the bold title “This Is Not a Film” to the Cannes Film Festival on a flash drive hidden in a cake.

“I am alive as long as I make films. If I don't make films, then what will become of me, it doesn't matter anymore,” he said earlier this week. | BGNES