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, Gulîstan, Land of Roses isn't sensationalizing these women.

"I tried to do the opposite," Gulîstan's Montreal-based filmmaker Zaynê 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 as the life they were born into as 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 in Gulîstan, they are not only Kurds fighting sieges, they are women fighting for personal freedom.

Leaving their families and homes forever and engaging in warfare is 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 fighters live like nomads in the mountains to train in strategy and weapons handling. (Gulîstan, Land of Roses/NFB)

The women are all 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 enemies movements from the mountains and defending the people who are targeted by them.

Beautiful scars

The film stays mainly focused on life in the mountains with imagery from the battlefield reaching viewers through stories from shell shocked fighters.

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.

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."

Kurds in Montreal

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

Filmmaker Zaynê Akyol is of Kurdish origin. She was born in Turkey and raised in Quebec. (Elif Uzun/NFB ) 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 there and it hasn't stopped.

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

In Montreal however, 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 Gulîstan, a woman she saw as a role model.

One day Gulîstan disappeared — she left Montreal to join the PKK.

Finding Gulîstan

Akyol went on to study filmmaking at L'Université du Québec à Montréal and made several films before beginning work on the script for Gulîstan.

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

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

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

Filmmaker Zaynê Akyol said the women were very open to showing her their guns and telling their stories. (Gulîstan, Land of Roses/NFB)

Akyol returned to Iraq to film in 2014 only to find some 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.

Gulîstan, Land of Roses is a co-production between the National Film Board and Montreal's Péripheria Films.

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