In this sneakily subversive slice-of-life drama, Jafar Panahi chronicles one girl’s journey to get home–in more ways than one.

Once I heard that It Was Just An Accident (2025) won the Palme D’Or at Cannes, I knew I had to see it. It’s not just that the film won the biggest prize at the prestigious film festival, but also that its director, Jafar Panahi, had garnered a reputation for producing socially daring works.

While I missed the chance to see the Cannes winning picture at the Riv, there luckily is a collection on the Criterion Channel devoted to Jafar Panahi’s previous works, which included The Mirror (1997). It’s a simple story, but one that takes many different dimensions. After school lets out for the day, Mina waits for her mother to pick her up, only to realize she must find her own way home. This would be any parent’s worst nightmare, but it’s especially so for Mina, who’s left to navigate the frustrating and crowded streets of Tehran with little money and with condescending adults all around her.

The genre “slice-of-life” has been used to describe films that attempt to portray a story as realistically as possible, such as The Florida Project (2017) and Souleymane’s Story (2024). This means as little garnishing in the editing room, no Hollywood furnishings, and definitely no contrived script. Considering the constraints of this genre, it can be hard to find space for imagination and contemplation in these stories. But miraculously, The Mirror manages to achieve it.

The Mirror actually shares a lot of commonalities with Bicycle Thieves (1948), the hallmark of the Italian Neorealism by Vittorio De Sica. In that film, a quest to find a stolen bicycle turns into an odyssey that will determine a man’s fate among his family. For The Mirror, a girl’s journey back home literally turns into a journey to find herself amidst the honking cars and confusing streets. It’s a treacherous urban fairytale, all chronicled on an impressively powered Lavalier mic.

The cinema verité aspects of this film also perfectly capture what it’s like to experience the city on your own before, and how you can find pockets of humanity in the unlikeliest of places. The grouchy lady on the bus might actually be a lovely person. One football game can unite a fractured society. And a girl’s tears might not be actually authentic, but a function of the world she lives in.

All of this is to say that Jafar Panahi truly made something special with The Mirror. It’s a slice-of-life film that manages to elicit some introspection and ambiguity within its neorealism, and reaches outside of the frame to pull you in. There’s few Hollywood tricks, except one small girl navigating the crowded streets of Tehran.

FURTHER THOUGHTS

• Mina is far more patient on a bus than I’ll ever be.
• Never has a Lavalier mic had more importance onscreen.
• As someone who’s navigated the bus systems of two different countries, I don’t know how I would have survived this film.