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Screening at Venice: Halkawt Mustafa’s ‘No Paradise If You Are Killed By a Woman’

The Iraqi Oscar entry features remarkable tableaus of war but incomplete drama.

A war film with a flimsy dramatic foundation, Halkawt Mustafa’s No Paradise If You Are Killed By a Woman is nonetheless evocative of real desolation. Following a Kurdish female sniper battling ISIS in Mosul—based on a real woman Mustafa met in 2014—the Venice Film Festival title (and Iraqi Oscar entry) boasts remarkable visual detail, in part because it was filmed on location in Mosul.

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However, this realistic backdrop is forced to contend with a lack of narrative inquiry into its heroine’s life and moral fiber. She seems to face ethical dilemmas at every turn, yet they’re seldom dramatized as such, resulting in a work that inadvertently skips past its most interesting ideas.

It opens with a slow and absorbing warzone sequence set in 2016. Vyan (Avan Jamal), a woman feared and mythologized as “the Kurdish sniper,” sneaks into a makeshift ISIS stronghold and rescues a child bride being held prisoner by a militant—who she readily kills with a single, clean headshot. It rings out triumphantly amid the ruins. Before she bids the girl farewell, Vyan holds up a picture of her younger sister, who’s being similarly held captive, and whose trail she’s been chasing for some time.

NO PARADISE IF YOU ARE KILLED BY A WOMAN ★★1/2 (2.5/4 stars) Directed and written by: Halkawt Mustafa Starring: Avan Jamal, Thorbjørn Harr,........

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