The Siege of Mecca (2018)

On November 20th 1979, at 05:30 in the morning, hundreds of heavily armed men take over the Grand Mosque of Mecca and transform the holiest shrine of Islam into a fortress. The insurgents demand the abdication of the Saudi Royal Family, the expulsion of all foreigners, the withdrawal of all progressive development and the Kingdom's return to the pure and radical Islam of the first generations. The following 15 days of occupation, siege and battle were kept under a veil of complete secrecy. They will cost hundreds if not thousands of lives, shake Saudi Arabia to its foundations, push the global balance of power to the brink of collapse, and mark the beginning of religiously motivated terrorism. With this political thriller documentary, director Dirk van den Berg and his international team finally reveal the links between the Siege of Mecca and our contemporary time. After 5 years of research and filming in 8 countries, they obtained exclusive access to first-hand accounts and never-before-seen private archives from Arab, French and American military, intelligence and civilian sources. With this film, they debunk the simplistic equations of "good" and "evil", "us" and "them", and reveal the intricate historic, political and religious links between the 1979 SIEGE OF MECCA and the birth of the violent strain of militant Islamism that ever since holds the world firmly in its grip.