“This movie tells the story of someone who had been everything to Saddam; it talks about his private life with him. This man had been Saddam’s driver, guard, barber, doctor and friend,” Mustafa told Rudaw.
Alaa Namiq, 50, hid Hussein for 235 days in a bunker he dug in his garden in Ad-Dawr town before the Americans found him there in 2003.
Mustafa says convincing Namiq to participate in the movie was not easy and he offered him two options, “either not say anything or talk about everything without a filter.”
Making the movie was full of challenges and took 10 years. Mustafa said he had to keep his work secret, even the camera operators and people living where he was filming didn’t know what the documentary was about. The secrecy was to protect the safety and privacy of the main character, who is sought by Iraqi and international media.
Mustafa said the story of the bunker had always intrigued him. “It was unbelievable that a man could be hidden like that for eight months in a hole.” He found Namiq in early 2010, “through a politician.”
They first spoke on the phone in 2010 and met in person in 2013. It took a year for Mustafa to convince Namiq to agree to talk and another three for him to go into details of his life when he was hiding Hussein.
The director refused to reveal the locations where the film was shot, but noted most of the places are real, except for a few scenes that were shot in sites designed to look like the real location.
Mustafa was born in 1985 in Sulaimani city. He is famous for his award-winning 2015 movie El Clasico about two Kurdish brothers who set out on a journey by motorcycle from the Kurdistan Region to Spain to meet their football hero, Cristiano Ronaldo, and give him a pair of handmade Kurdish shoes known as klash. His two other prominent works are Red Heart and The Women ISIS Fears.
The film, Hiding Saddam Hussein, is produced by the Norwegian Hene Film company and funded by the government of Norway. It is scheduled to hit cinemas in 2022. Rudaw Media Network has exclusive rights to the film in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
“I enjoyed making this film, and the questions I had in my mind, I found the answers through this documentary film,” said Mustafa. He believes people will enjoy “seeing an untold story.”
