Las tortugas también vuelan

Watching this movie is an incredibly absorbing (and even physical) experience. It is amazing how the young cast (non-professionals, some of them actually lived in refugee camps along the Iraq-Turkish border) deliver such powerful performances. This is also a huge compliment to the director Bahman Gohbadi who directed the children and teens. Although the film depicts the nightmare where these children live in, it has also some comic moments, making it even more believable and real life. And what's more: the film never gets sentimental.

For me it is one of the best movies I have seen in the last few years. Not uplifting (I really needed a drink after wards) and a film you will not easily forget. On the other hand the story does provide sparkles of hope and the main characters are true survivors. So don't miss it when it plays in a theater near you! "Turtles Can Fly" won the audience award of the International Filmfestival in Rotterdam 2005 (Netherlands).

"Turtles Can Fly," the haunting new film from Iranian writer/director Bahman Ghobadi ("A Time for Drunken Horses"), begins with an arrestingly beautiful image: A young woman (Avaz Latif), resolute in her manner, stands barefoot on a rocky ledge, contemplating a leap that will surely end in death. The landscape is gray and forbidding; the light is cold; the tone ominous. Then the camera comes closer to the actress' face, wreathed in tangled brown hair, and we realize, with a start, that she is a child.

Ghobadi's film is a story of wounded children, a devastating reminder of the costs of war. It's set in an Iraqi village near the Turkish border, in early 2003, as the villagers await news of an American invasion. As they try to set up a satellite dish, a key player emerges: a boy known as Satellite (Soran Ebrahim), with Coke-bottle glasses and a pushy, ever-yelling confidence. He's the expert in this operation, in the way that kids worldwide seem to know more about technology than their elders, and he's also the ringleader of the village children, who follow him like loyal acolytes.

Satellite, in his bulldozer way, soon catches the eye of Agrin, the girl we saw in the opening scene, and he's dazzled by her, gazing at her with Mooney eyes. "I've been looking for a girl like you," he tells her. She, orphaned by war, takes care of her two brothers — one is armless, maimed by a land mine; the other is a toddler — and ignores Satellite. There's an air of quiet tragedy about her, the reason for which is explained late in the film, in a scene so wrenching it's almost unbearable to watch.

The performances in the film — all by nonprofessional actors — vary in quality. Ebrahim has some touching moments as Satellite but rarely varies his voice from a shout; it suits the character's almost corporate like personality but eventually becomes wearying. But Latif, as the tragic Agrin, makes the most of her few lines; she's calm, astonishingly beautiful and skilled enough to let us see the heavy weight on this grown-up child's shoulders.

Ghobadi and director of photography Shahriar Assadi linger on the vast landscape, with its bleak fields and desolate, branch less trees, and create some beautiful effects with shadows. (In one shot, the hills glow under a night-blue sky as the tiny shadow figure of a child appears between them.) And the director's eye for heartbreaking detail is keen. In this harsh, desperate world, a child cries, with no hands to wipe away his tears. Others stare at the camera, looking far older than they should, as if seeking the end of a nightmare.

On the Kurdish refugee camp on the Iraqi-Turkish border, the boy Satellite (Soran Ebrahim) is the leader of the kids. He commands them to clear and collect American undetonated minefields in the fields to sell them in the street market and he installs antennae for the villagers. He goes with the local leader to buy a parabolic antenna to learn the news about the eminent American invasion but nobody speaks English and Satellite that knows a couple of words is assigned to translate the Fox News. When the orphans Agrin (Avaz Latif) and her armless brother Hengov (Hiresh Feysal Rahman) and the blind toddler Riga come from Halabcheh to the camp, Satellite falls in an unrequited love for Egrin. But the girl is traumatized by a cruel raid in her home, when her parents were murdered and she was raped. She wants to leave Riga behind and travel with her brother Hengov to another place, but he does not agree with her intention.

"Lakposhtha parvaz mikonand", a.k.a. "Turtles can Fly", is a heartbreaking movie with a war that is not shown on TV News where the victims are the children. The cast is formed by real refugees and is impressive the top-notch performances of the children. The title is curious since turtles lives on the water and on the land but do not fly. However, it is a metaphor since Bahman Ghobadi compares this reptile that moves from water to the land with the homeless Kurds that migrate moving forward. The fly might be a metaphor for the liberation from Saddam Hussein's regime. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Tartarugas Podem Voar" ("Turtles can Fly")

Among the hundred reasons I could list for you to go see this film, the first is the main character Kak "Satellite." He is truly a unique character - the likes of which I've never seen before. It is pretty impressive for a filmmaker to create something new - an on screen person so real, so normal, yet so different than anything we've seen. From the opening moments of the movie you feel you are getting to know a real human being. Satellite and the refugee children whose trust and love he's earned are the stars of this film. I don't think I've ever seen child performers better than some of these kids - if you were blown away by the children in movies like "City of God," this is a another one to look at in terms of performances. Stylistically this film is in a different category - it's a beautifully realistic movie - it's narrative unfolds effortlessly. You never feel you are watching a carefully crafted plot. You feel you are observing events that are happening - and yet it all, in retrospect, is well planned and crafted. The filmmakers and actors deserve much credit for creating a movie with its own touching and realistic voice.

I was very impressed with Bahman Ghobadi's film "Turtles Can Fly." With his other two films "A Time for Drunken Horses" and "Marooned in Iraq," he has now proved himself to be an effective realist. Though like most Iranian filmmakers, the ethnic Kurdish Ghobadi may be seen as a director who is too slow for fast food cinema tastes here in America. But, he allows every character to evolve and their stories to be told. The film's two most moving sequences involve one in which the title character Satellite tries to save small female child from American land mines, and another where the main girl in the story walks towards a cliff where she will contemplate suicide. With a series of flashbacks, we quickly understand why she is on the verge of taking such a desperate leap. The film also shows hope upon the outset of the American invasion. The Kurdish citizens are clearly burned out with Saddam Hussein and desperate for a change. But, it is clear from the moments that leaflets are dropped from planes that the American forces will be there for other reasons which have nothing to do with freedom for the Kurdish people, or any Iraqis. The film is not likely to change anyone's political view of the Iraq War here domestically. Conservatives will see the Kurds' plight as a good reason why we have to stay in Iraq. Liberals will see that the promise of an invasion without hostility is an impossible one because of vast cultural differences and in the end, nothing will really change in Iraq at all. I am one who believes films can not change a person's politics, and it seems clear that Ghobadi himself has mixed feelings about the whole affair. It should be noted that Ghobadi's "A Time for Drunken Horses" was the first Kurdish-language film to be shown in my father's country, Turkey. I am not Kurdish myself, but one has to find the fact that Ghobadi broke the barrier very ironic since Turkey is actually the country with the world's largest Kurdish population and because Turkey's best known filmmaker, the late Yilmaz Guney, was of Kurdish descent. Guney is also considered to be the best filmmaker of Kurdish heritage ever. But, just as Nuri Bilge Ceylan ("Uzak/Distance") is challenging Guney's place on the mantle as far as Turkish cinema, Ghobadi might well soon be recognized as the foremost Kurdish filmmaker who ever lived, if he isn't already. However, none of these factors should take away from Guney's merits. He still deserves far international recognition for his work, but since he died in 1984, it seems that his torch has perhaps already passed on to other hands.