Female guerrilla fighters battle ISIS in documentary 'Gulstan, Land of Roses'

Jihadists believe that being killed by a woman means they won't go to heaven, making the female guerrilla fighters in northern Iraq even more intimidating to those who would threaten their people.

Unlike other documentaries looking into the lives of female fighters, Gulstan, Land of Roses isn't sensationalizing these women.

"I tried to do the opposite," Gulstan's Montreal-based filmmaker Zayn Akyol said.

"I wanted to be in their lives and feel what they are feeling."

That feeling is often one of defiant femininity and joy crackling through strained circumstances.

The women profiled are fighting ISIS, as well asthelife they were born intoas Kurdish women.

The film opens with a close-up of one of the group's senior members describing the scars hidden beneath her hair.

She's smiling and wistful, lamenting that she never got one on her cheek.

"I think it would make me more beautiful," she tells the camera.

For the fighters profiled inGulstan,they are not only Kurds fighting sieges, they are women fighting for personal freedom.

Leaving their families and homes forever andengaging inwarfareis preferable to marriage for them.

"Married women are dedicated to slavery, they are never happy," one fighter says.

In another scene a young woman can't muster regret for the life she left behind, she kisses her gun and calls it "beloved."

The womenareall members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which defends stateless Kurds the largest group of stateless people in the world.

About 36 million Kurds are spread throughout Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

The fighters profiled never attack ISIS first, choosing instead to monitor their enemiesmovements from the mountains and defending the people who are targeted by them.

Beautiful scars

The film stays mainly focusedon life in the mountains with imagery from the battlefieldreaching viewers through stories from shell shockedfighters.

While the documentary was being filmed in 2014, ISIS took Sinjar, a small town in Northern Iraq.

"Forty women threw themselves off a cliff rather than be raped and sold by ISIS," one of the fighters said.

• Kurds capture road in push to retake Iraqi town ofSinjarfrom ISIS

These fighters chose to live in constant tension, waiting for ISIS, rather than be helpless in a village.

"They have all this injustice they keep with them," Akyol said of them. "Instead of being victims, they want to do something about it."

• 'I wished I was killed': Yazidi ISIS slave shares her harrowing story

Kurds in Montreal

Akyol made this documentary because she wanted to find her childhood role model, Gulstan.

When she arrived in Montreal from Turkey she was four years old.

Her family came to Canada for economic opportunities, but she remembers the feeling of relief at being in Montreal.

According to Akyol,Kurds in Turkey struggled with oppression when she lived thereand it hasn't stopped.

"Everyone has a family member who's been tortured or killed for being Kurdish," she said.

• Turkey escalates offensive against Kurds in northern Syria

In Montrealhowever, her family found a Kurdish community and cultural centre she even saw demonstrations against the Turkish government when she was young.

It politicized Akyol in her youth and then she met Gulstan, a woman she saw as a role model.

One day Gulstan disappeared she left Montrealto join the PKK.

FindingGulstan

Akyol went on to study filmmaking at L'Universit du QubecMontral and made several films before beginningworkon the script for Gulstan.

She intended to find its namesake among the PKK fighters in northern Iraq to make a documentary about her.

When Akyol arrivedinIraq in 2010 she couldn't find her role model, but she did eventually find women who knew her.

So her documentary shifted to telling Gulstan's story through their memory of her.

Akyolreturned to Iraq to film in 2014 only to findsome of those women she found were now dead, others were in a war zone.

"It was impossible to make the film I had in my mind," Akyol said.

So she kept the film's name as an homage to the woman who inspired it and worked to capture the spirit of others like her.

"I didn't expect so much friendship and openness," Akyol said of the women. "They really wanted to liberate the people. They had enthusiasm which helped a lot."

She said her time in the landmine-littered mountains didn't scare her, but she did feel the constant tension there.

Now, she is in Italy promoting the film.

Gulstan, Land of Rosesis a co-production between the National Film Board and Montreal's Pripheria Films.

The film was slated for a one-week limited engagement in Montreal's independent cinemas but it has been extendeduntil Feb. 2 due to demand.