No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman gets True Colours push before Venice
True Colours will handle Halkawt Mustafa’s Kurdish sniper drama before its Out of Competition world premiere at Venice.
By Georgia Hale · Staff Writer
2 min read
No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman is heading toward Venice with a new international sales partner, as Rome-based True Colours has boarded Halkawt Mustafa’s drama ahead of its September world premiere, Deadline reported.
The film is set to debut Out of Competition at the Venice Film Festival. According to Deadline, the project stars Avan Jamal as a female Peshmerga sniper who travels to Mosul to save her younger sister from ISIS while facing the trauma of what she endured and the person war has made her become.
What is No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman about?
The drama follows a Kurdish woman fighter whose rescue mission pulls her back into the violence that shaped her life, according to the report. Mustafa’s story was inspired by years of discussions with Kurdish women who fought ISIS.
The cast also includes Thorbjørn Harr, Kanar Sarchl and Kader Jalal, Deadline reported.
Mustafa wrote, directed and produced the film. His previous work includes the documentary Hiding Saddam Hussein, about the farmer who concealed the Iraqi dictator for 235 days in 2003, and The Classic, which was Iraq’s submission for the 2016 Oscars.
The director has also dealt with Kurdish women fighters before. Deadline noted that his 2015 documentary The Women ISIS Fears explored that subject.
Who is behind the Venice-bound drama?
The film is produced by Mustafa, Janne Hjeltnes and John M. Jacobsen for Hene Films, with The Chimney Pot in Sweden and La Media in Iraq on board as co-producers, according to Deadline.
Mustafa said, according to the report, that the True Colours team understood both the film’s creative aims and its broader message from their earliest talks. He also said he was pleased to work with the company on the film’s international rollout.
Fabio Tucci, True Colours’ head of acquisitions, said the company was excited to work on Mustafa’s film, Deadline reported. Tucci described it as a strong cinematic experience that presents the Kurdish struggle through a female fighter’s point of view.
True Colours’ involvement gives the film a sales partner as it arrives at one of the fall festival circuit’s biggest showcases. The Venice slot places Mustafa’s drama in front of industry buyers, festival programmers and international press before any wider rollout detailed by the company.
No further release plans were reported.
This story draws on original reporting from Deadline.