"Six Days"; The Story of the Occupation of the Iranian Embassy in London

The London Film Festival is hosting a new film titled "Six Days" directed by Toa Fraser and produced by Netflix, which narrates the lesser-known story of the occupation of the Iranian embassy in London. In April 1980, six Iranian Arabs who had entered Britain with Iraqi passports armed themselves and attacked the Iranian embassy in Kensington, London, taking the people inside hostage for six days. Their demand was the release of 91 Arab prisoners from the prisons of the Islamic Republic. The film gives a Hollywood-style flair to this story and attempts to create a suspenseful film based on historical facts, but it does not go beyond a simple narrative and semi-successful suspenseful scenes. From the outset, the film emphasizes the authenticity of the story. The armed attackers enter the embassy from the actual street where the Iranian embassy is located in London, which is still in the same place, and take twenty-six people, mostly embassy staff, Iranian visitors, and a few Britons, including a police officer and a BBC journalist, hostage. The film's producer stated before the film's screening at the London festival that it was made with the collaboration and based on the memories of three different individuals involved in the incident that year: the chief police negotiator, the BBC journalist present outside the embassy (not the hostage journalist), and a member of the special forces. The first two were present at the film's screening. The attackers in the film speak Arabic to each other (with English subtitles), but their conversations with the police are in Persian, and a translator translates for the police—and the audience—into English. Although the film attempts to portray a balanced view of its characters in some parts, this effort is futile, bringing the film closer to propaganda. The crying of the police negotiator at the end—and his hesitation in carrying out the final operation to kill them—is among the scenes that the film does not justify well in its narrative. The characterization of the attackers is also completely superficial and vague. We only know that they oppose the Islamic Republic regime and that their friends are tortured and executed in prison. Among the attackers, two characters are emphasized—and we see the rest of them very briefly and in distant shots—one with a more human face and the other very violent, and eventually, we witness the murder of one of the embassy staff by the latter. The characterization of both is so superficial that the attempt to show a more human side of the first character, Salim—with his fears and concerns—is a futile effort that generates absolutely no interest in us about his fate. On the other hand, the character of the female BBC reporter reporting outside the embassy—who is also attempted to be portrayed very humanely—is very cliché and unbelievable due to the poor performance of the actress. Regarding the Iranian government and its reaction to the hostages' lives, we are faced with only one sentence: "They will be martyrs in our path." Arab governments, contrary to the hostage-takers' wishes, do not send their ambassadors for negotiations, and thus everything remains in the hands of the Thatcher government, which is now facing a six-day crisis in the heart of London. The film emphasizes Thatcher's decision regarding the attackers at the embassy. In a meeting of British military and security leaders about this issue, we hear that Thatcher personally orders the military operation and even emphasizes that this operation should not be hidden from the eyes of the television and journalists, and thus the special forces' attack on the hostage-takers is reported live by the BBC so that, in the British government's view, "everyone knows how they deal with terrorism." The film's closing texts tell us that the Thatcher government greatly benefited from this "successful anti-terror operation"—which ended with the killing of five hostage-takers and the arrest of the sixth—and solidified its position for a decade.