Review of The Lady of Heaven (2021) by Dikhan — 25 Dec 2021

Truly one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my entire life. Every reviewer here is writing in order to push a blatantly sectarian agenda inherent in the movie. I am neither Sunni nor Shia, so I have no agenda in writing this. However, the movie essentially paints Shias as the only true Muslims, and paints ISIS as the truest Sunnis in the world. It portrays all characters revered in Sunnism but not Shiism comically poorly -- yellow teeth, disfigured, violent, greedy -- and all figures revered in Shiism as flawless and divine. More than that, it is stunningly boring -- one of those biblical-type (or in this case Quranic) tales that has an old lady telling the story of forgotten heroes, but the action is low-budget, the story trudges along, and, the namesake of the film (Fatima, daughter of Muhammed) is not shown as she is too divine to be shown on film (but for some reason they show Muhammad himself?). She seems only secondary to the story as well, even though they do their best to tie it all together.

Honestly, even as a piece of Shia propaganda it's terrible, because it is so heavy-handed, it actually makes any viewer who did not already come in with a bias in favor the film wonder what the other side of the narrative is. Do yourselves a favor and skip this, unless you're keen to watch a poorly made, low-budget, trudging, piece of propaganda. Sunnis, Shias and the whole world deserve a better representation of the story of Fatima than this.