Academy Award® winner Ben Affleck directs and stars in this based-on-fact thriller about a CIA "exfiltration" expert who concocts an outlandish plan to get six stranded Americans out of Tehran after the 1979 invasion of the American embassy — by having them masquerade as a Hollywood film crew.
Programmer's Note
Life imitates art and art imitates life in the powerful new suspense drama from director-star Ben Affleck, about the making of a fake movie that aimed to save real lives. Inspired by the recently declassified account of a joint operation between the CIA and Canadian authorities to smuggle six Americans out of Tehran in the wake of the Iran hostage crisis, Argo is a masterfully orchestrated thriller that is both wholly incredible and unbelievably true.
On November 4, 1979, a group of Islamist militants took control of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two embassy personnel hostage. Six members of the embassy staff managed to escape and secretly took refuge in the Canadian embassy, where they remain in constant danger from the militants’ door-to-door searches. Enter CIA "exfiltration" specialist Tony Mendez (Affleck), who cooks up a scheme to get the imperilled Americans out of the country. Mendez proposes to enter Iran posing as the producer of a fake Canadian science-fiction film entitled Argo, on the pretense that Iran’s arid rural landscape would make convincing (and cut-rate) extraterrestrial terrain; following the "location scouting," the six Americans will accompany him out of Iran posing as members of the film crew. To put his plan into action, Mendez will need expert advice, which leads him to befriend and recruit veteran Hollywood producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) to the cause. A script is cranked out and the plan is put into action — and once he lands in Iran, Mendez is going to have to play the role of a lifetime.
This unique spin on the caper movie is both a riveting historical thriller and a witty satire on Hollywood excess. Although the great supporting cast — including Arkin, John Goodman and Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston — provides much buoyant humour, the tension never lets up. Affleck has already proven himself capable of helming gripping action set pieces in The Town (which screened at the Festival in 2010). With Argo, Affleck’s canvas is wider, and his directorial control even more graceful and assured.
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