No Paradise If You Are Killed By A Woman

For decades, Hollywood has held a monopoly over the Middle East, with the likes of Kathryn Bigelow and Clint Eastwood fashioning its image as a monolith, defined by the masculine American warrior. Norwegian-Kurdish director Halkawt Mustafa shatters that mirage into a heartbreaking action-drama about a female sniper, Vyan (Avan Jamal), a soldier not driven by ideology or patriotism, but necessity.

Aptly titled No Paradise If You Are Killed By A Woman – a barb at the Islamic State’s fear of fighting female soldiers – Vyan is thrust into a fate her parents tried to keep her from by emigrating to Norway as refugees. She and her younger sister Helin (Mryam Barznji, Dina Rawand, Hesjan Mustafa) are kidnapped and sold into slavery during a family visit to the Iraqi Kurdistan in 2014, while their parents are killed by their captors, the Islamic State. Determined to get her sister back while carrying out missions for the Kurdish Peshmerga over three years, the 27-year-old dead-eyed markswoman becomes something akin to a legend in the region, one the terror state places a million-dollar bounty on.

As she inches towards her sister by showing her photographs while freeing women literally chained to murderous zealots, there is a sense of steadfast dedication in Vyan, who is ready to give her life for the cause. When a setback sends her back to her adopted homeland, there is a sobering realisation of what the Norwegian state apparatus is requiring of her and what it is prioritising, leaving her facing a choice. Once she catches wind of the Swedish Sniper Brothers, one of whom is “married” to her sister, choice gives way to necessity.

Punctuated by reflective, quiet evenings spent in overwatch positions, Vyan writes letters to Helin, an insurance that if she doesn’t live to see her sister, her immortal words certainly will. And there is an earned wisdom in her epistolary voice-over narration rather than mere platitudes. No Paradise If You Are Killed By A Woman marks a turning point in the war-torn Middle East filmography, one that sees its own children, relegated to refugees in the West, return as adults who are more Western than indigenous, brought back into the conflict their parents took them away from.

The 40-something director is sensible enough not to sensationalise, avoiding depictions of violence such as snipers shooting children or men assaulting women. But sound design and even a limited imagination make filling in the gaps its own kind of horror.

Mustafa’s earlier TV documentary, The Women ISIS Fears, in which he follows two fearless female fighters, certainly seems to have given way to his newest dramatic feature, if not directly inspiring it. Despite marking a departure from Hollywood’s treatments of this genre, there are certain melodramatic elements and plot devices that hinder this Iraqi-submitted 99th Academy Awards entry.

Like its heroine, who spends an entire day inching across the vast, debris- and body-filled square of Mosul to reach her sister, it seems that filmmakers ancestrally rooted in the region are reclaiming the stories of the forever wars, just as America and its military apparatus are falling out of favour with the world. Perhaps the film’s most profound line, that one can see ten years of their life disappear in an instant while having to wait an entire day to see the sunset, perfectly encapsulates what it means to live in and belong to this kaleidoscopic region, one that hasn’t seen profound peace for decades.

Reviewed on: 09 Sep 2026