Coup 53 Film Streaming

Ten years in the making, Iranian director Taghi Amirani's feature film debut is a fascinating investigation into the 1953 Anglo-American coup d'état in Iran that displaced democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossaddegh and reinstalled Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as shah, turning Iran into a despotic monarchy. Tracing the coup from the events leading up to it through its aftermath, Amirani and editor and cowriter Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather) uncover a wealth of secrets held for over sixty years and discovered in a trove of documents and film obtained from a 1985 British TV documentary. Assembling never-before-seen archival footage, animation, and interviews with witnesses on both sides of the conflict, Coup 53 presents a chilling exposé of one of the first covert actions by the US and UK to overthrow a sitting government in order to protect "national interests," at the expense of what could have been the largest democracy in the Middle East.

This special streaming presentation marks the anniversary of the August 1953 coup d'état in Iran. The film will be available for one day only, Wednesday, August 19.