It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, 2025). Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) works as a mechanic in a remote part of Iran. One night, a stranger (Ebrahim Azizi) comes in seeking help after damaging his vehicle. Recognizing the distinct squeak of the stranger’s prothetic leg, Vahid is immediately convinced this surprise patron of the shop is the guard who routinely tortured him when he was a political prisoner years earlier. Above all, It Was Just an Accident is a strong piece of writing from Jafar Panahi. The film compellingly wrestles with notions of justice and revenge in an authoritarian state, especially as Vahid brings in fellow former prisoners to confirm or refute his suspicions. Everyone grapples with the long shadow of their trauma — and state-sanctioned violence — in different ways that are always dramatically sound. Panahi takes great care in directing the film, and his deliberate storytelling occasionally tips over into being a shade too measured. Overall, though, it’s a compelling, powerful work.

The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, 2025). The Voice of Hind Rajab is set in a call center staffed by Red Crescent volunteers dedicated to helping civilians trying to survive in war-torn Gaza. They receive a call from a six-year-old girl named Hind Rajab. She is in a vehicle that is under fire, the adults with her evidently severely wounded or dead. The youngster is terrified and begs for help. Employing actual audio of the phone call as a framework for the depiction of this real event, writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania largely sticks with the team of volunteers as they offer support to the girl over the phone and desperately scramble to get a rescue vehicle dispatched to her. The immediacy of the film’s dramatization makes every bit of it almost unbearably sad, especially because it locks in on the futility of trying to help in the midst of a hopeless situation. Ben Hania is undoubtedly inventive in her approach, but some of the mixing of nonfiction elements and fictionalization is counterproductive. Just as the film should be at its most moving and harrowing, Ben Hania’s technique is frustratingly overt and distracting.

Mr. Nobody Against Putin (David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin, 2025). Pavel Talankin had an intimate view of the spread of Russian propaganda shortly after the nation launched a war against Ukraine. Talankin was employed by a school to oversee extracurricular activities and capture events on video. After the Russian government imposed counterfactual, nationalistic lesson plans on the school, he was specifically charged with getting visual documentation that the teachers were adhering to the despicable plan. Feeling queasy about the whole situation, Talankin connected with documentarian David Borenstein with the intent of sharing the footage as a means of exposing and condemning the government’s actions. The result, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, is an astute and moving documentary that offers a daring, harrowing portrait of a state conspiring against its own people. It’s not without its flaws: the films feels a little formless at times, and I could have done without some of the cutesier elements in the onscreen graphics. Even so, this is truly brave filmmaking.