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‘Amo Saddam,’ based on Will Bardenwerper’s best-seller ‘The Prisoner in His Palace,’ follows a U.S. soldier tasked with guarding the ousted Iraqi dictator in the months before his execution.
By Scott Roxborough
Europe Bureau Chief
The Banshees of Inisherin actor Barry Keoghan is set to star in Amo Saddam, the new film from Chernobyl director Johan Renck about the final days of Saddam Hussein.
Keoghan will play an American soldier tasked with guarding the ousted Iraqi dictator in the months before his trial and execution. The film is based on Will Bardenwerper’s best-selling book The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid, an account of the 12 U.S. soldiers who guarded Hussein through his trial for crimes against humanity. Darby Kealey adapted the book for the screen.
“In the six months preceding Saddam’s execution, our soldier grows close to Saddam, sharing the stale air of a bombed-out palace turned into a high-security prison whilst navigating the fine line separating fact and fiction,” reads the blurb for the project. “Amo Saddam attempts to reckon with the American imperial machine that has come to define the 21st century.”
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Renck said he hoped to capture “in a really immersive, authentic way” the experience of being in Baghdad in 2006 without any of the “typical tropes of a war movie.” The action of the film takes place in Camp Victory, the compound that served as a base for the occupying forces in Iraq. “So you have this American enclave with walls around it while right outside is Baghdad, this Goya-esque painting of sectarian violence where all the chaos unleashed by these actions of the Western world are taking place. That contrast is something we tap into in the script,” Renck says. “In a weird way, it’s a prison movie, it’s a war movie and it’s kind of a horror movie almost. There’s a little bit of genre-bending going on.”
The role of Saddam has not yet been cast, but Renck said he was looking for a “really good actor from the region, who speaks Arabic and can authentically embody the role.”
Dublin-born Keoghan was Oscar-nominated for his performance in Banshees and was the lead in Emerald Fennell’s controversial Saltburn.
“Barry has proven himself time and time again to be an actor who is so adept at playing really complex characters and we couldn’t be happier having him as our lead for what is going to be a challenging, ambitious and hopefully really special film,” said Michael Parets, who will produce Amo Saddam together with Reneck.
The project will be one of the first to go through Parets and Renck’s Sinestra banner, and the first to be produced together with Fremantle, with which Sinestra has a first-look deal. Bardenwerper, a former Airborne Ranger-qualified infantry officer, will serve as executive producer. Principal photography is planned for the fall.
Renck won an Emmy for directing HBO’s Chernobyl and is known for his work on Breaking Bad and Bloodline. His latest feature, Spaceman — produced by Parets for Netflix and starring Adam Sandler, Paul Dano and Carey Mulligan — will have its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival next week.
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