Iraq has chosen “No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman,” a war drama from Norwegian-Kurdish director Halkawt Mustafa, as its official entry for Best International Feature at the 99th Academy Awards. The film premieres out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on Monday, giving it a rare launchpad before its Oscar campaign even begins.
The story follows Vyan, a Kurdish sniper who buried her emotions to survive years of combat against the Islamic State. When she learns her younger sister, missing since ISIS overran Mosul in 2014, might still be alive, she heads back into the city she fled to find her. Avan Jamal plays Vyan opposite Norwegian actor Thorbjørn Harr, with Kanar Sarchl and Kader Jalal rounding out the cast. Production filmed on location in Mosul, a choice that grounds the fiction in the physical scars still visible across the city more than a decade after its liberation.
Iraq’s National Selection Committee for the Academy Awards, which operates under the Ministry of Culture’s Department of Cinema and Theatre, picked the film unanimously after reviewing the country’s eligible submissions. Mustafa, born in Iraqi Kurdistan before fleeing to Norway as a child, has said the project grew out of a real encounter with a female Peshmerga sniper on the front lines in 2014, when Kurdish women took up combat roles to help repel ISIS advances. He explored similar territory in his 2015 documentary “The Women ISIS Fears,” which also examined Kurdish women fighters, and in “Hiding Saddam Hussein,” his documentary about the farmer who sheltered the former dictator for 235 days.
This marks Mustafa’s second trip to the Oscar race after Iraq submitted his film “The Classic” in 2016. Hene Films produced the new picture with Norway’s Janne Hjeltnes and John M. Jacobsen, alongside co-producers La Media in Iraqi Kurdistan and The Chimney Pot in Sweden. True Colours is managing international sales. Empire Entertainment has already secured theatrical rights across the Middle East and North Africa, with a rollout planned in 16 countries.
The Academy will reveal its 15-film international shortlist on December 15, ahead of nominations on January 21 and the ceremony on March 14, 2027.
