Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj

A Kurdish filmmaker is taking one of the most overlooked stories of the war against ISIS from the battlefields of Iraq to one of the world’s most prestigious cinematic stages. You Will Not See Paradise If You Kill a Woman, directed by Kurdish filmmaker Halkawt Mustafa, follows a female Peshmerga sniper who secretly enters ISIS-held Mosul in an attempt to rescue her younger sister. Set against the collapse of Iraqi defenses and the rise of ISIS in 2014, the film does more than revisit one of the darkest chapters in Iraq’s recent history. It places a Kurdish woman at the center of a war narrative that has too often been told through the experiences of men, governments, militias, and international coalitions.

That choice is politically and culturally significant. The war against ISIS produced thousands of stories of courage, sacrifice, displacement, captivity, resistance, and loss, yet many of the women who participated directly in the conflict remain marginal figures in the international memory of the war. Kurdish women were not merely witnesses to the conflict; some fought, served, defended communities, endured displacement, and participated in a broader struggle against an organization whose ideology treated women as objects of domination and violence. By placing a female Peshmerga at the center of its narrative, Mustafa's film attempts to move these women from the margins of history toward its center.

The story unfolds during the chaotic period when ISIS seized large areas of Iraq and transformed Mosul into the organization's de facto capital. The collapse of federal forces created a security vacuum that left the Kurdistan Region exposed, forcing the Peshmerga to defend the region's borders and prevent ISIS from advancing further toward Kurdish-controlled territory. The conflict quickly became more than a conventional military confrontation. It became a struggle over territory, identity, survival, and competing visions of what the future of Iraq and its communities would look like. For Kurdish society, the war also produced a generation of fighters whose experiences have yet to be fully incorporated into the international cultural record of the conflict.

The film's central character embodies that forgotten dimension. A female Peshmerga sniper enters ISIS-controlled territory with the assistance of Iraqi forces, risking her life to rescue her younger sister. The premise combines the personal and the geopolitical: a national conflict is experienced through the most intimate possible motivation, the attempt to save a member of one's own family. That tension gives the story its potential power. Rather than portraying war exclusively through maps, commanders, weapons, and military operations, the film asks what happens when geopolitical violence enters a family and forces an individual to choose between safety and responsibility.

Mustafa has explicitly connected the project to his desire to recognize Kurdish women's sacrifices. His decision to make a female Peshmerga the protagonist was motivated by what he described as respect for the sacrifices and efforts of Kurdish women. That is important because representation itself becomes part of the argument. When a community's history is repeatedly narrated by others, the absence of certain voices can become a form of historical erasure. Cinema can challenge that process by transforming individuals who might otherwise appear only as statistics or background figures into complex human protagonists.

The film also arrives after a decade in which images of Kurdish women became globally associated with the struggle against ISIS. Yet there is a striking difference between being internationally visible and being historically understood. Kurdish women fighters were frequently photographed and celebrated as symbols of resistance, particularly in Western media, but symbolic visibility does not necessarily translate into deeper understanding of their political, social, and personal experiences. The image of the armed Kurdish woman can become iconic while the individual behind the image remains invisible. Mustafa's film appears to be attempting to move beyond the icon and toward the person.

That distinction matters because the Peshmerga itself occupies a complicated place in the history of the ISIS war. When Iraqi federal forces collapsed in 2014, Kurdish forces became central to defending the Kurdistan Region and holding territory along the front lines. Their role subsequently became intertwined with the broader international campaign against ISIS. Yet the international narrative of the war has often centered on the United States-led coalition, Iraqi security forces, ISIS, and the dramatic liberation of cities such as Mosul. The Kurdish contribution has been recognized, but the individual stories behind that contribution have received considerably less cinematic attention.

The story of a female Peshmerga entering Mosul therefore offers a different entry point into a familiar conflict. Mosul is not simply a location in the film; it represents the heart of the ISIS project in Iraq and one of the most consequential urban battlefields of the modern Middle East. To enter that space secretly means entering an environment where identity itself could become a matter of life and death. The protagonist's mission consequently becomes a confrontation not only with an armed organization but with a system that sought to control movement, identity, family, and women's bodies.

The title itself—You Will Not See Paradise If You Kill a Woman—immediately establishes the film's moral confrontation with ISIS ideology. It places violence against women at the center of the story rather than treating it as a secondary consequence of war. That is particularly relevant given ISIS's systematic use of gender-based violence, forced marriage, sexual slavery, and other forms of abuse. The film's central act of resistance is therefore not simply military. It is also a rejection of the idea that women can be reduced to victims without agency.

Yet the film's importance may extend beyond its subject matter. Its journey to the Venice International Film Festival gives Kurdish cinema an opportunity to enter a global cultural conversation on its own terms. The 83rd Venice International Film Festival, scheduled for September 2–12, 2026, remains one of the world's most prominent international film platforms. For a Kurdish filmmaker to bring a story about a Kurdish woman, the Peshmerga, Mosul, and the war against ISIS to such a stage represents more than an artistic achievement. It is also an opportunity to challenge the geographic boundaries through which Kurdish history is usually consumed.

The production itself reflects the international ambition of the project. According to Mustafa, more than 1,000 people were involved in the production, which took nine years and brought together Norwegian company Hene Films, Kurdistan Region-based LaMedia, and Swedish company Chimney Pot. A nine-year production process is itself revealing. Films about conflict often emerge rapidly in response to breaking events, but the extended development of this project suggests an attempt to create something more durable than a contemporary war drama. The goal appears to be to transform a particular episode of Kurdish wartime experience into a cinematic work capable of surviving the news cycle.

That distinction is increasingly important as memories of the ISIS war begin to move from immediate political experience into history. The generation that witnessed the fall of Mosul, the displacement of millions, the rise of ISIS, and the subsequent military campaign is now living through the process of remembering what happened. The danger is that as the urgency of the conflict fades, the complexity of those experiences can also disappear. Cinema can function as a form of historical preservation precisely because it allows political memory to be carried through emotion, character, image, and narrative.

For Kurdish society, this is especially consequential. Kurdish history has repeatedly been shaped by wars and political struggles in which Kurdish voices have had limited control over how their experiences were represented internationally. The struggle for political recognition has therefore always been accompanied by a struggle for narrative recognition. The battlefield determines who controls territory; culture often determines who controls memory. Mustafa's film enters that second battlefield.

There is also something strategically important about bringing the Peshmerga story into international cinema rather than limiting it to political speeches or military commemorations. Institutions can record battles, governments can publish reports, and historians can reconstruct events. Films, however, can reach audiences who may never read a policy paper about the ISIS war or study the history of the Peshmerga. A single character can sometimes communicate the human meaning of a conflict more effectively than hundreds of pages of institutional documentation. In that sense, cinema becomes a form of public diplomacy.

Mustafa's own career gives the project additional weight. Originally from the Kurdistan Region and now based in Norway, he gained international recognition with his 2016 feature film Clash, which was screened in more than 56 countries and received international accolades. His documentary The Hiding of Saddam Hussein also attracted significant attention. His experience operating between Kurdish and international cultural spaces gives him an unusual position from which to translate Kurdish wartime experience for a global audience without necessarily surrendering its cultural specificity.

That balance may ultimately determine the film's success. Kurdish stories entering international markets face a difficult tension: they must remain authentic enough to preserve the particularity of Kurdish experience while also becoming accessible to audiences unfamiliar with the region's history. Mustafa has described the film as using an artistic and poetic language to present Kurdish history and culture differently. If successful, that approach could allow the film to avoid becoming either a conventional war movie or a simplified political statement.

The international response will also reveal how much space global cinema is prepared to give Kurdish narratives beyond the familiar imagery of conflict. Kurdish cinema has often been expected to explain war, oppression, displacement, or political struggle. But Kurdish filmmakers are increasingly capable of using those experiences to produce stories that are not merely political documents but sophisticated works of art. The difference is crucial. A people should not have to be permanently trapped inside the role of victim or fighter in order to be visible internationally.

This is why the film's female protagonist matters beyond the immediate story. She represents a Kurdish woman who is simultaneously a soldier, a sister, and a participant in history. Her mission is personal, but the environment around her is geopolitical. She is not simply rescuing a family member; she is navigating the consequences of the collapse of a state, the rise of a terrorist organization, the mobilization of Kurdish forces, and the internationalization of an Iraqi war. Through her, the enormous machinery of geopolitics becomes visible at human scale.

The film may also force audiences to reconsider what they understand by the word “Peshmerga.” Outside Kurdish society, the term is often associated primarily with male fighters and military formations. Yet women also participated in the struggle, and their stories challenge simplistic assumptions about Kurdish gender roles during wartime. The female Peshmerga protagonist therefore expands the historical image of the institution itself. She demonstrates that the defense of Kurdish territory and communities was not exclusively a male undertaking.

There is an additional irony in the film's premise. ISIS sought to construct a world in which women were subjected to extreme forms of control, while the protagonist represents a woman moving in the opposite direction: armed, trained, mobile, and willing to enter enemy territory to determine the fate of her own family. That contrast gives the story a deeper ideological dimension. The film is not merely depicting two sides of a military conflict; it is placing competing ideas about women, freedom, authority, and human agency against each other.

The timing of the Venice premiere could therefore be significant. More than a decade after ISIS swept across Iraq, the international community has largely moved on to other crises. But the consequences of that war remain embedded in Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, and the wider Middle East. The stories of those who fought, survived, disappeared, were displaced, or lost family members have not disappeared simply because the international headlines have changed. Bringing one of those stories to Venice offers a reminder that wars do not end when the cameras leave the battlefield.

The film's expected theatrical release toward the end of 2026, alongside reported interest from international distributors, could further extend that conversation. If distributors acquire the film for audiences across different countries, the story of a Kurdish woman entering ISIS-held Mosul could reach viewers who have never encountered Kurdish cinema. That would give the film significance beyond its commercial prospects. It could become another channel through which Kurdish history enters the global cultural imagination.

Ultimately, You Will Not See Paradise If You Kill a Woman is about more than a female Peshmerga, ISIS, or the rescue of a sister. It is about memory, representation, and the power to tell one's own history. The war against ISIS produced countless heroic narratives, but not all of them received equal attention, and not all voices survived the transition from battlefield to history. By placing a Kurdish woman at the center of a story about courage, family, and war, Halkawt Mustafa is attempting to recover one of those voices.

If the film succeeds, its greatest achievement may not be the spectacle of war. It may be the simple act of making the world stop and look again at a woman who fought in a war whose history has too often been told without her. From the front lines of Kurdistan to the screens of Venice, the journey of this film is itself a reminder that battles are fought not only over territory, but over memory. And sometimes, decades after the guns fall silent, the struggle to decide whose story will be remembered is only beginning.

About the Author

Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj is a political and geopolitical analyst, academic, and founder of Kurdish Policy Analysis, focusing on Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, regional security, geopolitics, energy, and international affairs. He holds a PhD in English Literature from Brunel University London, with research focused on war literature, and has extensive experience in policy analysis, international relations, academia, and regional affairs.

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