The Grenada Invasion gives an insider’s perspective on a pivotal yet often overlooked moment in the Cold War — the United States’ military invasion of the island nation of Grenada and its lingering after effects.

With unprecedented access to former Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard — who is living in Jamaica after serving 25 years in prison for a coup that sparked the U.S. military invasion of tiny Grenada in the Caribbean, and who has agreed to tell his story exclusively to the filmmakers — The Grenada Invasion will be, at its core, an intimate story of the inside of the revolution and invasion from Coard’s perspective.

But it is also the story of a friendship between two men whose love and trust of one another is ultimately turned against them. Coard and former Prime Minister Maurice Bishop end up on opposite sides of a covert and controversial CIA plot meant to trigger a coup, which is used as justification for the invasion. Just as the Grenadian militia stood no chance against the might of the American military, neither could the friendship between Coard and Bishop withstand the sustained pressure of a CIA psyops program and the Machiavellian maneuvers of Cuban/Soviet interests.

The film deconstructs a key moment in the Cold War, played out in the tropics on an obscure island where, even after all this time, the era’s intrigue and suspicion remain just below the surface.