Iran Screening: The Fall of A Shah – The Story of the Iranian Revolution

The Fall of a Shah is the story of the rise and fall of
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. The film includes exclusive
interviews with some of the people closest to the Shah and Ayatollah
Khomeini. The film picks up where Bahari’s previous film, An Iranian Odyssey, finishes: the return of the Shah to power after the CIA coup in 1953.

By digging out rare archival footage from BBC’s archives,
Bahari tells the story of a man whose ambitions to modernise Iran were
eventually overshadowed by his megalomania. The film is not much about how the revolution happened. It rather explores why the Shah was toppled and Ayatollah Khomeini replaced him.

The inclusion of BBC reports from 1948 until 1979 is also  a
commentary on the state of the media and how little they understood
what was going in Iran. Even though Ayatollah Khomeini started his
campaign against the Shah in 1963, he is not in any of the BBC’s
“in-depth” reportings. The Fall of a Shah is ultimately is about the power of religion to create surprising social and political upheavals.

Length: 100 mins