Amr Salama, the award-winning Egyptian director who is bringing his latest film Sheikh Jackson to Toronto next month, is developing a feature aimed squarely at one of the biggest war movies of all time. Iraqi Sniper (working title), will tell the "other side of the story of American Sniper, the story about the villain," Salama tells THR. In Clint Eastwood's 2014 box-office smash American Sniper, Bradley Cooper starred as top U.S. marksman Chris Kyle. His chief antagonist in the film was a mysterious sniper on the side of the Iraqi insurgents who went by the name of Mustafa.

"He's the hero in my film," says Salama, who says he was spurred to make the film after he first saw American Sniper. "I hated it. That was my inspiration — I hated it so much that I wanted to work on a different version of that story." There was indeed a real-life top sniper fighting for the Iraqis, given the nickname Juba, whose exploits — thought by some to be hundreds of kills — were touted in a number of videos released between 2005 and 2007. There were rumors that he had even been an Olympic athlete at one point. "But I'm trying to make an antiwar film," says Salama. "Whereas American Sniper was pro-war."