COUP 53 Documentary Q&A with Walter Murch and Taghi Amirani

 

 

****You can watch the film at your own time via the link below available until end of February

https://watch.eventive.org/coup53/play/6011b7cf3f8be60030cc5f72

 

Larushka Ivan-Zadeh will be hosting the Q&A. She is a film critic at The Times, Film Editor at The Metro and a contributor to Radio 4‘s Film Programme.

While making a documentary about the CIA/MI6 coup in Iran in 1953, Iranian director Taghi Amirani and editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, The English Patient) discover never seen before archive material hidden for decades. The 16mm footage and documents not only allow the filmmakers to tell the story of the overthrow of the Iranian government in unprecedented detail, but it also leads to explosive revelations about dark secrets buried for 67 years. Working with Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Schindler’s List, The English Patient) to help bring the lost material to life, what begins as a historical documentary about four days in August 1953 turns into a live investigation, taking the filmmakers into uncharted cinematic waters. The roots of Iran’s volatile relationship with America and Britain has never been so forensically and dramatically exposed.

PICKED FOR THE 5 BEST DOCUMENTARIES OF 2020 BY THE WASHINGTON POST

This powerful and authoritative documentary by the Iranian

filmmaker Taghi Amirani is as gripping as any thriller

Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian

 

Both as a detective story and as a deep dive into a world event

whose consequences linger, it is bracing, absorbing filmmaking

Ben Kenigsberg – New York Times

 

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