Iran planning to sue Hollywood over `Argo`: Reports

Tehran: Iran is planning to sue Hollywood over the Oscar-winning `Argo` because of the movie`s allegedly "unrealistic portrayal" of the country, Iranian media reported today.

Several news outlets, including the pro-reform Shargh daily, said French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre is in Iran for talks with officials over how and where to file the lawsuit. She is also the lawyer for notorious Venezuelan-born terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal. Following the 1979 attack on the US Embassy in Tehran, 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days, but six embassy staffers were sheltered by the Canadian ambassador. Their escape, using a fake movie as a cover, is recounted in `Argo`. After its Oscar win in February, Iranian officials dismissed `Argo` as pro-CIA, anti-Iran propaganda. The lawyer told the semi-official Mehr news agency that she will start a campaign to show that Argo is a lie, while pressing to stop distribution of the movie. "We will be able to block distributors of the movie, force them to apologise and challenge them to confess that the movie is nothing but a sheer lie," the lawyer said. Though the movie isn`t showing in any Iranian theaters, many Iranians have seen it on bootleg DVDs and it set off a spirited debate that exposed a generational divide. Iranians who took part in the 1979 Islamic Revolution picked apart the portrayals of Tehran at the time but those too young to recall the events were eager for a different view on what had happened. PTI