IT WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT

Dear Mr. Sajad Norouzi Azar

Please forgive the delay in replying. I have not been well nor able to respond promptly to the many emails I have received recently.

Thank you for your queries about my relationship to “It Was Just An Accident”. Ever since I heard about this film, I have been perplexed about how to react to it, and you have given me an opportunity, from Iran, to do so now as a first step towards clarification.

Let me begin by declaring emphatically how much I have admired over the years the films of Jafar Panahi, way before he was well known abroad. And add that I respect immensely the courage he has shown in defense of human rights and artistic expression in his country, with great peril to himself and his well-being and output.

Regarding the film itself that he has just premiered, I cannot give an opinion regarding plagiarism because, being in Chile at the moment, I have been unable to see it and therefore do not feel qualified to comment on it yet.

What I can do is recount my connection to Jafar Panahi and his connection to my play and film, “Death and the Maiden.”

Back in 2009, precisely on November 29^th, I received an email from Oliver Dungey, a British film producer, who, acting on behalf of Panahi, inquired about acquiring the adaptation rights to my play and film in order to film an adaptation.

Because I was so enthusiastic about Panahi’s work, I opened negotiations to explore this possibility, through my own emails and my British agent, Julia Tyrrell. Many of these exchanges were with Jafar himself, to the point that he sent me the potential screenplay of the work he intended to film, which followed very closely the outlines of my work. I was intrigued by his proposal, only pointing out that his ending – where the doctor is executed – was a mistake as it did not allow the victim to contemplate forgiveness to at least show the quality of mercy, the need to go beyond the cycle of endless retribution, the need to bury the past and not be eternally haunted by it. He responded that this violent ending was necessary in Iran, as it was impossible to let the perpetrator get away free.  I finally acceded to his right, as an author and auteur, to discover his own solutions to the dilemmas my Death and the Maiden deployed, even though I disagreed with his need for “closure”.

This was all part of a fluid correspondence over quite a long period, all of which I have kept and can produce for anyone to examine, even if, for the moment, I would rather not expose this back and forth.

No contract was signed due to two reasons. The first were complications in my ability to grant the rights. The second, more serious, was that Jafar became even more the target of the regime, forbidden to film and then jailed. I was one of those, of course, who protested these outrages internationally.

Even though I reserve judgment, I believe, having read considerably about “It Was Just An Accident”, that there can be no doubt that Jafar Panahi has based his new work on my Death and the Maiden and has been inspired by what I wrote. I am disappointed that, given the paper trail of correspondence between me and him and my representatives and his, that he did not even refer to his debt to my play, nor made the slightest mention of it in any of the many interviews he has given. This recognition would have been the least I would have expected from one artist to another.

I have been active for many years in the struggle against the current dictatorship in Iran and would not want this information or possible critique to damage the necessary solidarity with the democratic movement in that country where such a number of my books have been translated and my plays, not only Death and the Maiden, have been consistently staged. Nor would I wish these words of mine that prove (and I have ample proof) the significant relationship with Jafar Panahi in the past to create trouble for a work of art that, undoubtedly, will be, whatever my opinion about it, a  meaningful contribution to the discuss of how we deal with terrible crimes committed by state officials, how a country and its inhabitants can heal after decades of brutality and persecution.

I cannot, however, ignore all the striking parallels between “It Was Just An Accident” and “Death and the Maiden” and do not doubt that this new film originated from the influence exercised by my own vision, characters, dilemmas and plot. I can safely state that the central story of “It Was Just An Accident” was “Not An Accident” at all.

Perhaps Jafar’s reluctance to mention the relevance of “Death and the Maiden” to his new film is due to some legal advice he and his producers received. To this, I cannot, for the moment, respond.

But I am copying my London agent, Julia Tyrrell and her manager, Nick Clarke, on this, as well as my American agent, Jonathan Mills, along with Rodrigo Dorfman (my son and literary executor if I were to be incapacitated) and my assistant Suzan Senerchia.

I will await the advice of my agents before deciding what other measures, if any, should be taken in this case.

If you are to use these remarks of mine, my only condition is that you publish them in their entirety, as I would not want my comments to be taken out of context or to be employed as part of the typical rivalries and feuds that beset artistic creation. I do not want my words to diminish in any way the relevance of Jafar Panahi’s filmmaking and messages to our dire contemporary times.

Again, my thanks for giving me the chance to elucidate my lengthy relationship with Jafar Panahi and the obvious roots of his new film in my own work that he knows so well.

Cordially

Ariel Dorfman