In 1980, a six-hour epic called Long Days (Al-ayyam al-tawila) was released about Saddam Hussein’s 1959 attempt to assassinate Iraqi prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim. It was directed by Egyptian filmmaker Tewfik Saleh and edited — and possibly codirected — by Terence Young, the legendary British filmmaker behind three of the first four James Bond films.

Commissioned by Hussein himself, the film was not the first piece of elaborate hagiography by a dictator. What makes it unique, though, is not only the involvement of someone of Young’s caliber but its surprisingly gritty take, reminiscent of Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, John le Carré, or the films of Jean-Pierre Melville, with a wounded Saddam escaping the scene of the crime on horseback disguised as a Bedouin.

The role of Saddam Hussein is played by Hussein’s real-life son-in-law Saddam Kamel. Kamel defected from Iraq in 1995, but in 1996 he returned, believing he had been forgiven by Hussein, only to be murdered.