Returning to the War Within

MOVIE REVIEWS
No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman
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Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Halkawt Mustafa
Writer: Halkawt Mustafa
Cast: Avan Jamal, Thorbjørn Harr, Kanar Sarchl, Kader Jalal
Where to Watch: shown at the 2026 Venice International Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: The word "return" carries a different weight when the place waiting for you is somewhere you've spent years trying to erase from your mind. Vyan escaped the war, rebuilt some version of a life away from it, and learned to survive by shutting down any emotions that might force her to confront what had happened. NO PARADISE IF YOU ARE KILLED BY A WOMAN sends her back to Mosul with a rifle in her hands and the possibility that the younger sister she believed was gone may still be alive.

That setup could easily become a conventional revenge thriller, and Halkawt Mustafa clearly isn't afraid of letting the film carry some of that energy. Vyan is a Kurdish-Norwegian sniper returning to territory controlled by ISIS, so the potential for firefights, pursuit, and physical danger is built directly into her journey. The more compelling battle, however, is the one that began long before she goes back.

War didn't simply take Vyan's sister. It changed the way Vyan learned to exist, creating someone capable of functioning by burying pieces of herself that were too painful to carry around every day. Discovering that her sister might have survived doesn't reopen one wound so much as destroy the emotional structure Vyan built around believing there was nothing left she could do.

Mustafa brings to this material a connection that lends the premise considerably more weight than the action-thriller description might suggest. He was born in the Kurdish region of Iraq, fled to Norway as a child, and has repeatedly returned to Iraqi history in his work. More importantly here, the story was inspired by his encounters with Kurdish women fighting ISIS, including a female Peshmerga sniper he met at the front in 2014.

That history matters because female Kurdish fighters became powerful symbols during the fight against ISIS for reasons that went well beyond simply seeing women carrying weapons. They were fighting an organization responsible for the enslavement, rape, murder, and displacement of women across the region, with Yazidi women suffering particularly horrific persecution. NO PARADISE IF YOU ARE KILLED BY A WOMAN doesn't need to manufacture stakes when the history surrounding Vyan's fictional journey already carries so many of them.

Even the title reaches into the psychological side of that conflict. Reports from the period frequently described ISIS fighters as fearing death at the hands of women because they believed it could deny them the paradise promised to martyrs, an idea Kurdish fighters themselves sometimes discussed as another weapon against their enemy. Whether every ISIS fighter actually held that belief isn't nearly as important to the film as what the idea represented: women who had been viewed as potential victims becoming the people their oppressors feared encountering on the battlefield.

There's an obvious temptation to turn that into something triumphant, and that may be where Mustafa has to exercise the most restraint. Vyan can be formidable without her suffering becoming a shortcut toward creating a supposedly unstoppable action hero. A woman surviving atrocities and becoming extremely capable with a weapon doesn't mean the damage disappears the moment she begins firing back.

Avan Jamal feels like a smart choice for that reason. Her role in THE EXAM already demonstrated how much she can communicate through tension and restraint, qualities that should fit a character whose survival has depended upon controlling what she allows herself to feel. Vyan needs to remain believable as someone hardened by violence without becoming emotionally empty, because there's a major difference between suppressing emotion and no longer having any.

The search for her sister gives all of that somewhere to go. Revenge alone could propel Vyan through Mosul, but the possibility of rescue changes the emotional equation because she isn't simply returning to kill the people responsible for her pain. Somewhere inside that devastated city may be the person whose disappearance helped create the woman Vyan became.

Shooting in Mosul itself should make an enormous difference. Mustafa has spoken about wanting the city's actual streets, ruins, and silence rather than reproducing them somewhere safer or easier. That decision carries a responsibility of its own. These locations aren't production design. They're places where people lived, died, fled, returned, and continued trying to build lives after the world's attention moved elsewhere.

That can give NO PARADISE IF YOU ARE KILLED BY A WOMAN something many war thrillers struggle to create: a landscape that isn't merely there to look devastated behind its characters. Mosul becomes part of Vyan's memory, and every damaged building potentially exists on two timelines at once. She sees what is standing in front of her while carrying whatever existed there before.

My biggest concern comes from the same quality that makes the film commercially intriguing. The teaser presents an aggressive action thriller filled with weapons, explosions, and danger, and there's nothing inherently wrong with giving this story that momentum. The problem would come if spectacle begins simplifying a conflict that Mustafa appears determined to examine personally.

At 110 minutes, there's enough room to balance both sides without turning the film into a history lesson. Vyan's journey can provide the forward motion while her return gradually exposes what she has spent years avoiding, allowing the action to come from character rather than interrupt it. The difference may seem minor on paper, but it's the difference between watching somebody complete a mission and understanding why completing that mission may never actually set her free.

Thorbjørn Harr's presence also suggests that Vyan's return won't exist entirely inside the familiar lone-warrior structure. The broader cast gives Mustafa opportunities to complicate her relationship with the place she left behind, particularly because leaving a war zone and surviving it from elsewhere can produce its own form of guilt. Some people stayed, people who couldn't leave, people who died, and people whose lives continued after Vyan's departure, making "going home" far more complicated than crossing a border.

There's also something uncomfortable about rescue itself. Vyan has spent years imagining her sister through the moment she disappeared, but finding someone alive doesn't mean finding the person you remember. If her sister survived ISIS captivity, she has her own history, trauma, and identity that developed during those missing years, and Vyan's desperate need to save her could easily collide with the reality that neither sister can simply return to who they were.

That possibility is where NO PARADISE IF YOU ARE KILLED BY A WOMAN could separate itself from the revenge movies its premise initially resembles. Killing an enemy provides a clear on-screen endpoint. Trauma rarely offers one.

Mustafa's interest appears to be in what violence leaves behind after the immediate battle is over. Vyan's skill as a sniper may get her back into Mosul, but it can't protect her from memory, grief, or the possibility that the answer she has spent years wanting won't repair what happened. Her greatest weapon is also part of the identity war forced onto her.

NO PARADISE IF YOU ARE KILLED BY A WOMAN has every opportunity to deliver the physical intensity its title and premise promise. However, that's almost the least interesting thing about it. The harder story is about a woman who survived by making herself emotionally unreachable, only to discover that loving someone may require tearing down every defense that kept her alive. If Mustafa keeps that woman at the heart of the film, the bullets won't be what stays with us when it's over.

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[photo courtesy of LA MEDIA, HENE FILM, THE CHIMNEY POT]

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