France has selected Jafar Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner It Was Just An Accident as its entry for the Best International Feature Film category of the 98th Academy Awards.
The selection overseen by France’s National Cinema Centre (CNC) was made by a committee composed of professionals from both the artistic and industry sides of the French film world.
Panahi’s tense thriller stars Vahid Mubasseri as a man who believes he has found the man who tortured him while he was serving a prison sentence. Seeking revenge, he kidnaps him and begins to bury him alive in the desert.
Suddenly doubting that he has the right man, he seeks out a wedding photographer (Maryam Adshari) who was in jail with him at the time hoping she can confirm the man’s identity. She is in the middle of a wedding photo shoot with a bride (Hadis Pakbaten) and groom (Majid Panahi). Tension rises as they are all thrown into the mix.
The film world premiered in Cannes winning the Palme d’Or from a jury presided over by Juliette Binoche.
The film has since played in a raft of festivals including Locarno, Sydney, where it won the Audience Award, and most recently played at TIFF, where Panahi stopped by the Deadline Studio.
It heads next to the San Sebastian and New York film festivals. Neon has set an October 15 release date for New York and an October 17 one for Los Angeles, while French distributor Memento will launch the feature in French cinemas on October 1.
The battle to be the Oscar French candidate was particularly fierce this year, with the other shortlisted candidates including Ugo Bienvenu’s Arco, Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, and Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life, starring Jodie Foster.
This year’s selection follows in the wake of a tumultuous awards campaign for France’s 2025 entry, the Mexico-set musical film Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard.
The film started out as one of the 2024-25 award season’s hot favorites, garnering a near-record 13 nominations, including in the Best International Feature Film category.
But its Oscar campaign hit the rails after homophobic and racist social media posts by the film’s star Karla Sofía Gascon dating back to the early 2020s, were unveiled in early 2025. In the backdrop, the film also weathered criticisms over its portrayal of Mexico and transpeople.
After making it onto the Best International Feature Film List, Emilia Pérez lost out in the category to Brazilian entry I’m Still Here by Walter Salles but clinched Oscars for Best Original Song and Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña).
France last won the international film Oscar with Régis Wargnier’s Indochine in 1993.
Prior to Emila Pérez, Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables was the last French film to make it through to the final nomination stage in 2020, while Alice Diop’s Saint Omer and Tran Anh Hung’s The Taste Of Things made it onto the shortlist.
The country’s filmmakers have also enjoyed success outside of the Best International Feature Film category, with Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall enjoying a buzzy 2023-24 season and then winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
The deadline for submission to the Best International Feature Film category of the 98th Academy Awards is October 1. Check out our entries roundup here.