Coup 53

The documentary tells what happened in Tehran on the nineteenth of August 1953. On that day a group working together with agents of the British MI6 and the American CIA brought down the elected government led by Mohammad Mosaddegh. The film rests on archive documents, on people who lived through the period and on records that came to light later; it follows how the coup was planned and who was involved in it. In one part of the account the text of a lost television interview is read again by an actor. The account treats the event not as a closed case but as a break whose consequences are still running. Ralph Fiennes appears in Taghi Amirani’s hundred and twenty one minute documentary, completed in 2019.