HIDING SADDAM HUSSEIN
Genre
Documentary
Running time
96 minutes
Year
2023
Language
Arabic
Subtitle
English
Country
Norway and Iraq
Director
Halkawt Mustafa
Bio
Producer
Janne Hjeltnes, Halkawt Mustafa, Anders Hereid
Cast
Alaa Namuq Jasim Al-Doori
Scriptwriter
Halkawt Mustafa
Eighteen years ago, the invading US forces were searching Iraq for its deposed president, Saddam Hussein, who had seemingly disappeared into thin air. He was finally discovered in the town of Al-Dawr, living in a bunker his chauffeur and bodyguard dug between the date trees in his orchard. Alaa Namiq, now 50, hid Saddam for a staggering 235 days before the Americans tracked him down in 2003, executing him three years later. Halkawt Mustafa persuaded Namiq to tell his story for the first time in this startling documentary, which took 10 years to make and was necessarily shrouded in so much secrecy that even the crew did not know the real subject of the film they were making.
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