I must have been in 11th or 12th class when I first came across Argo. It had just won Best Picture, and it kept showing up at the top of every list on the sites I used to visit to download films. I even downloaded it. I think I started watching it too, but I couldn’t hold on.

I always craved good cinema — meaningful cinema — the kind that gives you something you’d like to keep with you. That’s what I had expected from Argo. But my interest in history hadn’t developed yet. The CIA, America, special ops — didn’t use to excite me the way they do now. The craving for good cinema was there, but the context to appreciate this one wasn’t.

That was over 13 years ago.

Today, I opened Hotstar and the movie popped up again. I recognized it immediately. Surprisingly, I still had no idea what it was about — only that it was based on something real.

The film opens with a quick crash course on Iran’s history, and right there I understood why it had shown up in my recommendations now. The US and Iran are in active conflict in 2026. The film is about the 1979 hostage crisis. 1979 to 2026 — nearly 50 years, and the tension between these two countries never really went away. It just keeps finding new forms.

I knew about the Shah, his closeness to the West, the 1979 revolution, his overthrow. But I didn’t know how deep the hostility between the US and Iran went, or how far back it started.

This is the thing I keep coming back to — what I wrote about in my earlier post. American cinema documents its own history, even the uncomfortable parts. The covert ops, the political failures, the mess they helped create. They make films about it, win Oscars for it, and keep going.

I think films wait for you. You don’t watch them when you first hear about them. You watch them when you’re ready. Thirteen years ago, I wasn’t.