In the landscape of global cinema, the Crusades have been visualized largely through a Western lens: Richard the Lionheart’s roar, Orlando Bloom’s reluctant archery, and Ridley Scott’s grey-green Kingdom of Heaven . But in 2017, a quiet epic emerged from the Caucasus that flipped the script entirely. Saladin (original title: Səlahəddin ), produced by Azerbaijan’s state film company Azanfilm, is not a blockbuster. It is a manifesto. A $12 million historical war film that aims to reclaim the narrative of the 12th-century Kurdish-Muslim leader from Western romanticism and Arab nationalist tropes—and in doing so, accidentally reveals the anxieties of the modern post-Soviet Turkic world. The Production: A State’s Ambition Directed by Farid Gumbatov (a little-known director who previously worked on propaganda shorts about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict), Saladin was bankrolled directly by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, led by Azerbaijan’s First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva. This is not a commercial venture; it is a cultural weapon. The budget—large by Azerbaijani standards but minuscule for a Hollywood period epic—was spent on thousands of extras, custom chainmail from Iran, and sprawling sets built in the Gobustan desert.
What makes the film fascinating is its production context. Azerbaijan, a Shia-majority, secular Turkic nation, rarely produces medieval epics. Why Saladin? The answer lies in geopolitics. Saladin (Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn) was a Kurd, not a Turk. Yet the film casts him as a heroic figure whose "Ayyubid dynasty" is framed as a spiritual precursor to modern Turkic statecraft. The script, written by a team of Azerbaijani historians, deliberately downplays Saladin’s Kurdish ethnicity while emphasizing his "Turkish-speaking" Mamluks (slave soldiers). This is revisionism with purpose: in a region where Turkey, Iran, and Arab states vie for influence, Azerbaijan claims Saladin as a Turkic-Islamic hero. If you’ve seen Ridley Scott’s 2005 epic, you’ve seen the bones of Saladin —but stripped of moral ambiguity. The 2017 film follows a formulaic arc: the unification of Muslim factions (Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia), the Battle of Hattin (1187), and the recapture of Jerusalem. However, where Scott gave us a conflicted Balian and a weary Saladin (played with quiet dignity by Ghassan Massoud), Gumbatov’s version offers no grey areas. saladin film 2017
Equally telling is the film’s treatment of Christians. Unlike Kingdom of Heaven , which portrayed a multi-faith Jerusalem, Saladin shows Christians as either fanatical killers or helpless monks. When Saladin retakes Jerusalem, the film skips the famous historical account of his leniency (charging a ransom but letting the poor go free). Instead, it shows him personally handing gold to weeping nuns. It’s hagiography, not history. In the landscape of global cinema, the Crusades
What makes the film worth a deep feature is not its quality but its function. In an era of streaming and franchise cinema, Saladin (2017) is a rare artifact: a state-funded epic made not to entertain but to forge identity. It is the cinematic equivalent of a monument—stiff, ideological, and unlovable—but nonetheless a powerful statement that the Crusades remain a living, contested memory. For Azerbaijan, a small country squeezed between Russia, Iran, and a hostile Armenia, Saladin is not a 12th-century general. He is a mirror. And in that mirror, they see themselves: brave, pious, Turkic, and alone. You should not watch Saladin (2017) for entertainment. You should watch it as a case study in how nations weaponize history. It lacks the poetry of El Cid , the grit of Outlaw King , or the nuance of The Message . But it has something stranger: absolute sincerity. Gumbatov and his backers truly believe they are restoring honor to a misunderstood hero. And in that belief, the film becomes a fascinating failure—one that tells us more about Azerbaijan in 2017 than about the Crusades. It is a manifesto
The protagonist, Saladin (played by Azerbaijani actor Ilham Gasimov, a former theater performer with a granite jaw and zero charisma), is less a man than a marble statue. He recites Quranic verses in a monotone, weeps twice (once over a fallen child, once over a captured Crusader’s honor), and never raises his voice. The film’s villain, Reynald of Châtillon (a hysterical, one-dimensional brute), tortures Muslim merchants, laughs while drowning prisoners, and is ultimately beheaded by Saladin himself in a scene that earned the film its "18+" rating in Russia.