The Smithian

Argo‘s story is so outlandish that it would make a totally implausible movie plot if it didn’t happen to be true. Six Americans escaped the U.S. Embassy in Tehran as it was overrun in 1979, and hid for months in the home of the Canadian ambassador. The film is about how they were rescued: the CIA created a fake film company to work on a fake science fiction film for which they faked a Canadian crew scouting potential film locations in Tehran. A dummy production company, press events, storyboards, a real script, and many other details went into building the background for this film, all designed to provide cover for taking the six Americans right out the front door, as it were. The operation remained classified until 1997.

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…a pro American basketball player…accepts a contract to play in Iran…[he] forms an unlikely alliance with three Iranian women against the backdrop of…upheaval in Tehran. Thanks to these women, his apartment turns into an oasis of free speech…a…prelude to…Arab Spring…

It’s a Kickstarter project—more, here.

Maryam Keshavarz’s Circumstance…depicts an Iran that the American media rarely shows—indeed, an Iran that Iranian media rarely shows. In Iran, women are only allowed to take their hijabs off indoors, but films are banned from showing this. And yet “Circumstance” does, as it tells the tale of a teenage lesbian couple struggling to stay together in Tehran.

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