(AFP) – Oct 11, 2007

DUBAI (AFP) — Two Gulf Arab states have banned a controversial US movie revolving around a probe of a 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans, officials said on Thursday.

"The Kingdom," directed by Peter Berg, was banned in Kuwait and Bahrain, but is showing in the United Arab Emirates and will be screened in Qatar starting on Saturday.

"The screening of the film has been banned in Kuwait for many reasons, chiefly because it is a false depiction of facts," a source at the cinema committee of Kuwait's information ministry told AFP.

The ban was confirmed by the public relations manager of the Kuwaiti firm that runs cinemas and distributes movies in Kuwait.

The Kuwaiti National Cinema Company had prepared posters in anticipation of the film's release in two weeks, Hind al-Nahedh told AFP.

The head of publications at Bahrain's information ministry, Jamal Daoud, said the film had been banned there "on orders from high up in the ministry."

He did not elaborate.

Cinemas in the neighbouring UAE started screening the film this week, and the director of the Qatari Cinema Company, Abdurrahman Mohsen, said "the Kingdom" will be shown at 26 cinemas in Qatar.

There are no public cinemas in Saudi Arabia, an ultra-conservative kingdom that applies a strict version of sharia, or Islamic law.

"The Kingdom" belongs to a new wave of Hollywood movies that are using the uncertainties and confusion of the post 9/11 World Trade Centre attack as their backdrop.

But Berg said last month that while politics and religion play a significant part in his latest film, the primary objective is to entertain.

Starring Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner and Chris Cooper, "The Kingdom" follows a team of FBI agents sent to Saudi Arabia to probe the circumstances of a bomb attack targeting American citizens.

The film studies the complexities facing investigators from two alien cultures attempting to work together for a common cause, and was born from Berg's knowledge of the 1996 Khobar Towers attack, a truck bombing on a US Air Force apartment complex in Al-Khobar that killed 19 US citizens and wounded 371.

Berg admitted, however, that part of the film's objective is to educate US cinema-goers.

"I was pretty shocked to find out that many people don't understand that 15 of 19 hijackers at 9/11 were not from Iraq," he told reporters in Los Angeles. "They were from Saudi Arabia. (Al-Qaeda chief) Osama Bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia."

Although the film's desert sequences were all shot in the US southwestern state of Arizona, Berg visited Saudi Arabia in the course of his research.

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