May 6, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 3, 1424

CAIRO, May 5: A comedy short movie has been produced in Egypt about former Iraqi information minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf, who became a global celebrity for his persistent refusal to admit US troops were in Baghdad.

The 12-minute film, titled “I am not Sahhaf”, tells the story of a man of the street who admired the former Iraqi information minister so much that he ends up thinking he is Sahhaf.

It took a week to produce the film which will be broadcast on Arab television channels soon and will appear in cinemas in the summer, its producer, Abu al-Qassem Omar Rageh, a Libyan, said.

Egyptian actor Antar Hilal plays a man who is so haunted by the press conferences Sahhaf gave daily during the three-week US-British war that he starts to dream about him and eventually thinks he is Sahhaf.

People around him do not take him seriously at first, but when the war reaches the end, his family tries to hand him over to the US authorities in the hope of getting award money.

The film was shot in the crowded streets of Cairo and almost triggered a riot, because “people actually thought it really was the Iraqi minister of information”, said Rageh, who heads the production company Shouaah. “We had to call in the police to break up the crowd,” he said.—AFP