Written and directed by Halkawt Mustafa, No Paradise If You Are Killed By a Woman stars Avan Jamal as Vyan, a Kurdish woman from Norway. In 2014, she and her family visit Iraqi Kurdistan on vacation. But while they are there, Islamic State (ISIS) extremists attack. Vyan’s parents are murdered. She and her younger sister, Helin, are kidnapped by ISIS and sold as sex slaves. Vyan kills the man who bought her and escapes to territory controlled by the Peshmerga, the armed wing of the ant-ISIS forces. Vyan joins an all-female fighting force. She learns to be an expert sniper and kills at least 100 ISIS soldiers in three years. Because, as the film’s title implies, if an ISIS soldier is killed by a woman, the soldier cannot go to paradise, ISIS become obsessed with killing her and places a million-dollar bounty on her head.
Those who think the idea of an all-female military battalion is a feminist fantasy, might want to watch the film Reseba: The Dark Wind, Iraq’s entry to the 2016 Academy Awards. Director Mustafa himself worked as a war photographer for Norwegian television and met women who were Peshmerga fighters.
Vyan returns to Norway, where she learns that her sister is still alive and living in a forced marriage with a Swedish ISIS soldier. The Norwegian government wants Vyan to change her name and enter into a witness protection program. Their representative explains that because there is a bounty for killing her, if Vyan continues to use her real name, she is a danger to Norwegian citizens. Vyan chooses to go back to Iraq and try to rescue her sister.
Most of the film is devoted to Vyan’s pursuit of Helin and her ISIS husband. It is a realistic depiction of an expert sniper at work. For snipers, surveillance and strategy are more important than shooting, which is the culmination of careful and even tedious preparation.
Halkawt Mustafa also directed El clásico, a comedy that was Iraq’s entry to the 2015-2016 Academy Awards. On the surface, El clásico and No Paradise If You Are Killed By a Woman are so different that it is impressive that they were made by the same director. But there is a surprising similarity. Speaking at the Asian World Film Festival in 2016, Mustafa told the audience that Iraqi filmmakers normally shoot their films in Jordan, but he was determined to shoot El clásico in Iraq itself. This was a dangerous undertaking, and he vowed not to do it again. But when it came to filming No Paradise If You Are Killed By a Woman, he insisted that he film in the still uncleared rubble of Mosul rather than in a safe location. Afterwards, he declared, I will never do it again.”
