Hiding Saddam Hussein documentary to be screened in Saudi Arabia

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Hiding Saddam Hussein, a documentary featuring a man who hid the former dictator of Iraq in his house for nearly a year, will be screened at a film festival in Saudi Arabia in coming days.

Hiding Saddam Hussein tells the story of Alaa Namiq, who hid Hussein for 235 days in a village south of Tikrit as thousands of US troops searched for him after he was toppled in 2003.  

Rudaw Media Network is one of the main partners of the film and holds the rights of its distribution in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq, and its trailer will be released for the first time by Rudaw. 

Director Halkawt Mustafa told Rudaw on Thursday that the documentary will be screened on Friday and Saturday at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah. 

The festival kicked off on Thursday and will last until December 9 under the theme: Your Story, Your Festival. 

Hiding Saddam Hussein was also screened at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), one of the three most prominent documentary festivals in the world, on November 13. 

“The aim of producing this documentary is to tell the true story of the pit where Saddam Hussein was found. Only one person can tell the story – the one who dug the hole for Saddam himself,” Mustafa, who lives in Norway and has been producing the documentary for over ten years, told Rudaw earlier this month. 

On March 20, 2003, the US and its allies launched an operation to end Hussein’s rule in Iraq. He disappeared and was found by US forces in a pit near his hometown of Tikrit on December 13, 2003. He was executed on December 30, 2006.