You’re watching Ralph Fiennes in bone temple . I’m watching Ralph Fiennes in bone temple AND play the MI6 agent who facilitated the 1953 coup in Iran.. in the same 24 hours … Avail to rent on Vimeo for 10 dollars worth it
Directed by Taghi Amirani
Tehran, Iran, August 19, 1953. A group of Iranian conspirators who, with the approval of the deposed tyrant Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, have conspired with agents of the British MI6 and the US CIA, manage to put an end to the democratic government led by Mohammad Mosaddegh, a dramatic event that will begin the tragic era of coups d'état that, orchestrated by the CIA, will take place, over the following decades, in dozens of countries around the world.
Coup 53 is showing in 1 cinema in London - next screening Saturday 14 November at 16:00 at Kiln Theatre.
Next screenings: Saturday 14 November.
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You’re watching Ralph Fiennes in bone temple . I’m watching Ralph Fiennes in bone temple AND play the MI6 agent who facilitated the 1953 coup in Iran.. in the same 24 hours … Avail to rent on Vimeo for 10 dollars worth it
ur watching ralph fiennes in bone temple. i’m watching ralph fiennes in bone temple AND the MI6 agent who lead the 1953 coup in iran…we are not the same…also fuck both the us and the uk!!! mossadegh you have to stop. you smoke too tough. your swag too different. your bitch is too bad. they’ll kill you 😪
Two movies in one: the Iran film and the ego film.The Iran film is about the 1953 coup in Iran, and it does a great job of telling this important story. It deftly explains the political/economic situation that led up to the coup and the naked self-interest of the UK and US interests that instigated it. It outlines the specific planning and undertaking of the coup, especially from a British perspective, and also from Iranian perspectives on both sides of the coup. It also touches on the aftermath of the coup: for the country sentenced to 68 years and counting of dictatorship by the coup; for other places (from Guatemala to Vietnam to the DRC to Indonesia to Chile to Iraq and more) who have had American regime change efforts inflicted on them since the 'success' of the 1953 experiment; and, touchingly, for ousted Prime Minister Mosaddegh himself.This Iran film tells this story through some new interviews and a lot of archived interviews from various places (as most of the main players have since died), especially footage from a 1985 documentary episode, End of Empire: Iran. It also uses an off-the-record research interview conducted as part of End of Empire with the MI6 officer who led the coup, Norman Darbyshire. This earlier documentary, including this research interview, were important in bringing out the truth of the MI6 involvement in the coup. Darbyshire did not consent to being named or filmed for the earlier documentary but his identity can now be revealed, and his name has been linked to the coup in print since 1989. The End of Empire producers graciously provided their Darbyshire interview transcript to the Coup 53 producers in 2014 to assist them in this new film. Coup 53's innovation was to dramatise the Darbyshire interview transcript using actor Ralph Fiennes to act the part of Darbyshire as if it were a filmed interview.All this is very effective and I give the Iran film 4/5. It could have been even better if this film had been allowed to be the whole film, instead of about half of it.You may be wondering why I gave so many details in the above paragraph about the specific ways this film was made, including its use of footage and research from the earlier End of Empire: Iran documentary episode. The reason is that some of those details are important for correcting the highly misleading material in the other film: the ego film.The ego film is a dishonest attempt to make Coup 53 seem like more than just a very good documentary about the coup, but also a groundbreaking piece of research that has uncovered new suppressed information. The film opens with the bold claim that it will expose what has never been known before about the coup. This is simply not true. This film publicises to a new audience the story of the coup, with a focus on the British involvement in it. This is laudable, but it is not exposing new information, but skilfully compiling and retelling information that has been told before in other media.Most egregious is Coup 53's treatment of the End of Empire documentary. End of Empire: Iran (NOT Coup 53) was the first film to expose the MI6's role in the coup. EOE:I provides 14 minutes of interview footage for Coup 53 (never credited on-screen), about an eighth of the screen time. And perhaps most importantly for this film, EOE:I's researcher Alison Rooper was the person who tracked down Norman Darbyshire and conducted the interview where he speaks frankly (but, at that time, off the record) about his role running the coup. EOE:I graciously provided all their research materials to the Coup 53 makers, including the Darbyshire transcript. Coup 53 would have been nothing, or very little, without End of Empire: Iran.So how does Coup 53 thank EOE:I for this? By devoting basically half their film to an essentially fraudulent narrative in which the Darbyshire transcript was originally a filmed interview that was suppressed at the behest of MI6, removed from the film, leaked to a journalist at the Observer, and "uncovered" by director Taghi Amirani as part of his independent research for this film. You wouldn't know it from simply watching the film, but every part of that last sentence is basically a le.The EOE:I producers have since provided copious evidence for the many misconceptions by which Coup 53 produces this false narrative to amplify its own importance and portray EOE:I as part of a censorship effort rather than the groundbreaking documentary that it was (not to mention Coup 53's chief influence and source).I recommend all readers review this evidence for themselves at the website the EOE:I producers have made in refutation of Coup 53: endofempireiran.com/. There's quite a lot on that website, but I definitely recommend at least reading the highlights page or watching the YouTube video they've produced. You can also watch EOE:I in full on Youtube here.A couple of quick highlights that I can't help but mention:(a) The cameraperson who appears in the film claiming to remember filming an EOE interview with Norman Darbyshire has since retracted his comments. He says that he was coached into thinking he remembered an interview with Darbyshire when Amirani assured him that there was in fact a filmed interview that has been lost, and he cast his mind back 35 years to an interview at the Savoy hotel with someone who spoke very frankly about the MI6 role in the coup and assumed this must be whom Amirani was talking about. He's since reviewed his memories and examined the evidence and realised that he was thinking of his interview with Sam Falle instead (another interview that is an important part of EOE:I, but is not mentioned in Coup 53, seemingly in order to make the Darbyshire interview seem all-important).(b) Did you wonder, as I did, where Amirani suddenly "found" the full transcript of the Darbyshire interview after we saw in such detail where he got the chopped-up version earlier on? It's never explained in the film. And after looking into it, I now realise why: because it was graciously given to Amirani by the EOE:I producers in 2014. If Amirani had been honest about this, it would have taken the wind out of the sails of this bogus narrative in which EOE:I tried to suppress and censor the Darbyshire information.Anyway, this ego film, I would have to rate 0/5. It's dishonest, ungrateful, egotistical fake news. And what's more, it's pointless. It didn't need to take up basically half of this film's running time and energy. (If anything the ego film is the main focus of Coup 53. It takes up the first hour of it and also the last line and end titles.) This film could have been great if it was just the Iran film, for the whole running time (which would have allowed them to go into more detail on all the relevant parts of the story - before, during, and after the coup).So averaging the two films within a film, I give it 2 out of 5. Such a strange story and such a shame, and a cautionary tale about the damaging power of human ego even in an otherwise very talented documentarian.
Coup 53 is an investigative documentary examining the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh by British and American intelligence agencies.
Coup 53 was released in Canada on August 19, 2020.
