COUP 53 Film Screening + Q&A with Director Taghi Amirani…

Hosted by the SOAS Iranian Society and the Centre of Iranian Studies.

6 - 8pm COUP 53 screening

8 - 9pm Q&A panel discussion

In this documentary-meets-detective-story, there is a reckoning with one of the most striking foreign interventions. In 1953, a military coup led by British MI6 and backed by the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. His crime: nationalising the country’s oil. The truth behind that original regime change for oil was buried for decades. Iranian director Taghi Amirani - physics graduate of the University of Nottingham - spent 10 years uncovering what really happened. With the handiwork of Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather Part II, The English Patient) and a gripping performance by Ralph Fiennes, the film unfolds like a John le Carré spy thriller — except every word is true. The roots of Iran's volatile relationship with America and Britain have never been so forensically and dramatically exposed.

The film’s editor is Walter Murch, who worked on “The Conversation” and “The Godfather: Part II” (both 1974) so there’s not much that he doesn’t know about conspiracy – how it leaks into a movie like the smell of drains. - Anthony Lane – The New Yorker

Ralph Fiennes appears, lending a wry le Carré air to proceedings as an enigmatic MI6 agent with an explosive testimony. - Larushka Ivan-Zadeh - The Times

This powerful and authoritative documentary by the Iranian filmmaker Taghi Amirani is as gripping as any thriller. A riveting documentary on a very British coup. A grim curtain-raiser to today's tragedies. - Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian

A maddening, gripping portrait of how imperialism works Coup 53 is almost as concerned with the film-making process - the lists, the dead ends, the searching - as much as it is with political history - Tara Brady – The Irish Times

COUP 53 Official Website: https://www.coup53.com/