Mosul is a 2019 Arabic-language American war action film[2] written and directed by Matthew Michael Carnahan. The film is based on the 2016 Battle of Mosul, which saw Iraqi government forces and coalition allies defeat ISIS, who had controlled the city since June 2014.

During the Battle of Mosul, three Iraqi policemen arrest ISIS drug smugglers. However, they are soon overrun by ISIS and run out of ammo while defending themselves inside a café building. One of the police officers, Kawa, a 21 year old Feyli Kurd recently enlisted as a police officer, loses his uncle during the gunfight. The Nineveh SWAT Team, while going on a mission of their own, find the stranded police officers and save them from the ISIS group, as well as execute the drug smugglers. The Nineveh SWAT Team, a police division made up of men native to Mosul who lost family members to ISIS and led by Commander Major Jasem, offers Kawa to join them since he lost his uncle to ISIS and is thus eligible to become part of their team. He accepts, while his partner, the other police officer named Jameel, offers to take Kawa’s uncle’s body for burial.

The SWAT team continue their mission. Kawa repeatedly asks about their mission objective but is always ignored. While resting inside an abandoned building, Kawa and Jasem notice Kawa’s previous partner, Jameel, returning and signalling to an ISIS car bomber the location of the SWAT team. Tomahawk, one of the SWAT team members, dies during the bomb blast. Commander Jasem gives Tomahawk’s axe to Kawa. As they take the body of their fallen SWAT member for burial, Kawa grows repeatedly frustrated as no one answers his questions and no one trusts him while Hooka accuses him of being a traitor’s partner.

While crossing into the ISIS-held part of Mosul, the SWAT team and the surrounding civilians come under fire from ISIS gunmen shooting from a rooftop and Hooka is killed. As the SWAT team clear the rooftop and plan their next course of action, an explosive-laden drone targets one of the SWAT men’s Humvees. A second explosive-laden drone is shot down by Iranian Special Forces operative Colonel Isfahani, who is commanding the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Mosul. He offers the SWAT team ammunition in exchange for cigarette cartons. As the SWAT men meet with the PMF and Jasem barters with Isfahani, Jasem realizes that one of the PMF’s prisoners is Kawa’s partner Jameel. Jameel explains that he was captured by the ISIS group and threatened with the assassination of his grandson in Michigan unless he informs them of the SWAT team’s location. Tensions between the SWAT and the PMF rise rapidly when Jasem and Ishfahani argue on what to do with Jameel, but Kawa uses the axe he was given and kills Jameel, de-escalating the situation. Waleed then exchanges Hooka’s hookah for an RPG with a single rocket, intending to attack an ISIS camp they’ve seen earlier from the rooftop.