Irish actor Barry Keoghan is set to star in a new film about the final days of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter.
Keoghan will reunite with "Chernobyl" director Johan Renck for "Amo Saddam," where he will play a US soldier tasked with guarding Saddam in the months before his trial and execution.
The upcoming film is adapted from Will Bardenwerper's best-selling book "The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid," which is based on the accounts of 12 American soldiers who guarded Saddam during his trial for crimes against humanity.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a blurb for the new project says: "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.
“Amo Saddam attempts to reckon with the American imperial machine that has come to define the 21st century.”
Renck told The Hollywood Reporter 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 film takes place in the Camp Victory compound, which served as a base for US troops outside Baghdad following the outbreak of the Iraq War in 2003.
"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 told The Hollywood Reporter.
"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."
Renck has not yet cast the role of Saddam Hussein but said he is looking to find an actor from the region who can speak Arabic and can "authentically embody the role."
Michael Parets, who will produce the film alongside Renck, praised Keoghan for his ability to play complex characters and said the Dubliner was the perfect choice for lead in the new film.
"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," Parets said.
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