“No paradise if you are killed by a woman”, interview with director Halkawt Mustafa and actress Avan Jamal

During the 83rd edition of the Venice International Film Festival we spoke with director Halkawt Mustafa and actress Avan Jamal for the film No paradise if you are killed by a woman, presented here in the Venice Open – Out of Competition section of the Festival. A compelling story where the director was inspired by the Kurdish women who stood against the darkness and chose to fight ISIS. Their courage has stayed with him since 2014, when he met women on the front line who were living with fear, loss and uncertainty, yet refused to give up.

The interview

During our conversation for FRED Film Radio, director Halkawt Mustafa explained how No paradise if you are killed by a woman is deeply rooted in reality. His experience as a war photographer and his encounters with Kurdish female fighters in 2014 became the emotional and visual foundation of the film, with many details directly inspired by what he witnessed. Mustafa explained that these women often faced an extreme choice: submit to the violence of the Caliphate or take up arms and resist. What struck him most was how ordinary many of them were: university students, mothers, young women who could have been members of his own family. This sense of authenticity also shaped the production itself and, determined not to recreate Mosul elsewhere, Mustafa insisted also on shooting in the city, despite the enormous practical and emotional difficulties involved. The film ultimately required nine years of work, a commitment he describes as exhausting but necessary in order to remain faithful to the reality he wanted to portray.

For Avan Jamal, the actress playing Vian in No paradise if you are killed by a woman, this character meant confronting a person marked by trauma, pain and survival, but also by an extraordinary capacity for love. Rather than defining her strength simply through the image of a woman carrying a weapon, Jamal was indeed interested in revealing the emotional force beneath that image. Seeing the film above all as a story about love and survival, and about how far people are willing to go for those they care about, even in the most violent circumstances. Playing Vian also meant reflecting on the real experiences of Kurdish female fighters and women in conflicts around the world, whose emancipation often emerges under extreme necessity. For Jamal, the character’s true power lies not only in resistance, but in her ability to preserve tenderness and humanity despite everything she has endured.

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