‘Hiding Saddam Hussein’ Director Unveils Feature ‘No Paradise if You Are Killed by a Woman,’ About Female Sniper Who Takes on ISIS (EXCLUSIVE)

Two years after he explored how former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein evaded capture following his ousting from power in the 2023 documentary “Hiding Saddam Hussein,” Kurdish/Norwegian filmmaker Halkawt Mustafa is delving back into Iraq’s recent history.

“No Paradise if You Are Killed by a Woman,” now in post-production, leaps forward a decade from the fall of Saddam and to the rise of the Islamic State. This time a drama, the feature follows a Kurdish-Norwegian female sniper who returns to the battlefield she once escaped, driven by vengeance and by the desperate hope of rescuing her younger sister, still imprisoned by ISIS in Mosul. Rising Kurdish star Avan Jamal (“The Exam”) plays the lead, while Norwegian actor Thorbjørn Harr (“The Tunnel,” “22 July”) also stars.

“This is a poetic portrait of a woman warrior who refused to bow to darkness,” Mustafa told Variety.

The story is rooted in the filmmaker’s own encounters with several women who fought against ISIS, and was inspired by the courage of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist Nadia Murad, who was abducted by the terrorist group during the Yazidi genocide of 2014. “Her courage in sharing her story with the world has been a guiding force for this project,” he said.

Mustafa wrote and directed “No Paradise if You Are Killed by a Woman” and also produces through his Norway-based Hene Films AS banner, alongside Janne Hjeltnes, John M. Jacobsen. Conversations are currently underway with international sales agents and distributors.

“Hiding Saddam Hussein,” which bowed at the 2023 Red Sea Film Festival, saw Mustafa speak to Alaa Namiq, the Iraqi farmer who hid Hussein from the U.S. army for 235 days, with the toppled dictator famously spending much of that time in a specially-dug spider hole. The film would up becoming one of the highest-grossing documentary films in the Arab box office.