Experiencing Interruptions?

Saddam Hussein

Stuck between illusory freedom and true perdition, Mona drags us into a world where cocaine, geopolitics, desires and solitude merge chaotically. Welcome to a world of mayhem: Mona’s, ours.

  • David Barrouk
    Director
    Cheap Thrill, La Onzième Plaie, Goodbye Melody, Celluloid City
  • David Barrouk
    Writer
    Cheap Thrill, La Onzième Plaie, Goodbye Melody, Celluloid City, Que les Feux Rouges S'éteignent, De la Tragique Impossibilité de faire des Snuff Movies, Stella
  • David Barrouk
    Producer
    Cheap Thrill, La Onzième Plaie, Goodbye Melody, Cheap Thrill, La Onzième Plaie, Goodbye Melody, Celluloid City, Que les Feux Rouges S'éteignent, De la Tragique Impossibilité de faire des Snuff Movies
  • Aitor Ibáñez López
    Producer
  • Mashal Attaï
    Key Cast
    "Mona"
  • Saddam Hussein
    Key Cast
    "As himself"
  • Renaud Guin
    Cinematographer
  • Renaud Guin
    Boom Operator
  • Aitor Ibáñez López
    Sound Design
  • Aitor Ibáñez López
    Editor
  • Luca Gaicher
    Sound Mixing
  • Aitor Ibáñez López
    Title Sequence
  • Hillel Schlegel
    Title Sequence
  • Yosra A.Nefzi
    1st Assistant Director
  • Lina Karân Durand
    2nd Assistant Director
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Saddam Hussein
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    11 minutes 57 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 1, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    2,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    France
  • Country of Filming:
    France
  • Language:
    French
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Short Shot Fest
    Moscow
    Russian Federation
    January 2, 2022
    Official Selection
Director Biography - David Barrouk

Taking into account that the identity is a prison, David(s) Barrouk has decided to escape it by creating more than one for himself. That’s why he can be described as a multi-faceted creator, hyperactive and resoundingly Mannerist.

He has written, directed and produced many short and medium-length films in our beautiful country of France, one feature-film which has been sponsored by the legendary directors Nicholas Roeg and Ken Russell in the dirty country of England, a short series on the strange means of communication that is Internet, as well as many music videos (Syd Matters, Kill For Total Peace, Poni Hoax, etc.). His films have won many more or less well-earned prizes from many international film festivals, all of them more or less famous (Prize Canal +, Fnac Prize at Cannes, Digital Festival of Vierzon, etc.), and they have been largely broadcast on many French and international channels and platforms (France 2, Canal +, Arte, TPS, Netflix, Vice, etc.).

He has written and co-written many films on spec, as well as requests for documentaries, short and feature-films (for Flair Productions and Maja Films, Bikini Films, Realitism, Numero 6 and Partizan Midi Minuit, Obedience Films, Mac Films, etc.), certain of which have been broadcast on many different channels (Arte, Canal +, TPS, France 2).

Apart from his career as a screenwriter, director and producer, David is the founder and director of the Method Acting Center, a school which is reputed for its masterclasses for actors, screenwriters and directors, all based on the famous methods of Stanislavski, the Actors Studio and Robert McKee. He’s also participated in many films as an acting coach and/or a script doctor (La Petite Reine, Partizan Midi Minuit, Bac Films, etc.). He’s the author of Stan or The Acting Partition, a book which combines education, autobiography and fiction in a whirlwind of mises en abymes.

His first novel, An Open Letter to a Closed Woman, which has just as much of the acid taste of pop culture as of the theatricality of dark Romanticism, will be published this year.

David lives in Paris. He has a child whom he doesn’t know, from an enchanting woman who refuses to speak to him.

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Director Statement

This world in which we “live”, which is saturated with images, pretty much fastens every person’s life - where reality fuses with fiction to the point of confusion, more or less significantly.

This is why we create and nurture relationships with public people and events, where nothing is organically connected anymore. Thus, in this shapeless and chaotic mixture, everyone goes along with their own supposed theory, their own how, their thumbs up or thumbs down on any number of subjects of which we only know a more or less artificial representation. Moreover, a representation which has been fabricated by others who don’t know that much any better themselves and/or who have motives which deform reality, transforming it into the fiction that they serve us, claiming it as the truth. In this way, our subjectivity, neurotic at times, often delirious, always unfounded, in turn creates visuals of fictions on top of visuals of fictions, which fasten our connection to realities that we actually know nothing about.

I wanted to explore that labyrinthine game of Russian dolls through the eyes of a modern young woman, hybrid, lost… just like us. Because we accuse, via visuals, the very thing that visuals disturb inside of us: our relationship to the very possibility of reality.

All the better! Well, that is, from a cinematic point of view.