Our Man in Tehran
2013 film directed by Drew Taylor and Larry Weinstein

Our Man in Tehran is a 2013 Canadian documentary film, profiling the role of Kenneth D. Taylor, Canada's ambassador to Iran in the 1970s, in helping six American hostages escape from Iran during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980 by engineering the Canadian Caper.
The film premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, but was distributed to general audiences as a television film on The Movie Network. It was released in the United States on May 15, 2015.
Several other political, journalism and diplomatic personalities involved in the events also appear in the film, including Joe Clark, Flora MacDonald, Robert Anders, William Daugherty, Carole Jerome, Tony Mendez, Joe Schlesinger, Zena Sheardown and Gary Sick.
The film won five Canadian Screen Awards at the 3rd Canadian Screen Awards in 2015, winning Best Documentary Program, Best Direction in a Documentary or Factual Series (Drew Taylor, Larry Weinstein), Best Photography in a Documentary Program or Factual Series (John Minh Tran), Best Picture Editing in a Documentary Program or Factual Series (Steve Weslak) and Best Sound in a Documentary, Factual or Lifestyle Program or Series (Martin Lee, David McCallum, Sanjay Mehta, Brennan Mercer, Jane Tattersall).
The film was adapted in part from cowriter Robert Wright's 2010 book Our Man in Tehran.
The public source identifies “Our Man in Tehran” as 2013 film directed by Drew Taylor and Larry Weinstein. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tehran, film and directed.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19427424. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 1979, 1980 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Our Man in Tehran” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.