Turtles Can Fly

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Turtles Can Fly
Turtles Can Fly film poster
Directed by	Bahman Ghobadi
Produced by	Babak Amini, Hamid Ghobadi, Hamid Ghavami, Bahman Ghobadi
Written by	Bahman Ghobadi
Starring	Soran Ebrahim, Avaz Latif
Distributed by	IFC Films (USA)
Release date(s)	September 10, 2004
Running time	95 min
Language	Kurdish
IMDb profile

Turtles Can Fly (Persian: لاک پشت ها هم پرواز می کنند Kurdish: Kûsî jî dikarin bifirin [1]) is a 2004 film written and directed by Bahman Ghobadi. It is the first film to be made in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

1 Plot
2 Review
3 Awards
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film is set in a Kurdish refugee camp on the Iraqi-Turkish border on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq. Thirteen-year-old Soran (played by Soran Ebrahim) is known as "Satellite" for his installation of dishes and antennae for local villages looking for news of Saddam Hussein. He is the dynamic leader of the children, organizing the dangerous but necessary sweeping and clearing of the minefields. He then arranges trade-ins for the unexploded mines. The industrious Soran falls for an unlikely orphan named Agrin (Avaz Latif), a sad-faced girl traveling with her disabled but smart brother Henkov, who appears to have the gift of clairvoyance. The siblings are care-taking a three-year-old, whose connection to the pair is discovered as harsh truths are revealed.

The question is, what happened to these children? There are so many, will the occupation make their lives better or worse? How could it get worse? The movie begins with the refugee camp recovering from an attack by Turkish soldiers, then the occupation of US forces they hope will save them. What happened to them?

[edit] Review

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Turtles Can Fly (2004), so far, is the most polished work of Bahman Ghobadi, the young Persian director whose pervious movie, “A Time for Drunken Horses” (2000), was quite successful in the States. The film takes place on the border of Iran, Iraq and Turkey in a refugee camp mostly accommodating Kurdish Iraqis, right before the invasion. The main challenge of these refugees is to stay alive; they see the invasion as the turning point, something that would bring an end to their helpless lives by overthrowing a vicious government whose activities have brought nothing but suffering and destruction. It is quite fascinating that Ghobadi has employed children of various ages as his main characters. It is the permanent impact of such a devastating condition on children that he is mostly interested. These are the children who never had a chance to experience a true “childhood”: hunger, poverty and the war that has destroyed their homes and killed their parents have precociously exposed them to poignant realties of life. In the second half of the movie we discover that Rega (the small child) who Agrin (15 year old girl) carries on her back, is not her little brother but her son, the outcome of violent rape when the Iraqi army invaded her village. The memory is so distressing and unbearable for her that she eventually decides to kill Rega who is the constant reminder of her bleak short life. The penetrating wounds of the harsh living condition do not end here. Next we are introduced to Hangao, her real brother, who has lost both his arms in a mine explosion. The scene that he unscrews the trigger of a mine with his teeth is dreadfully chilling. The scene, however, at the same time depicts the resilience of the children, the fact that despite all the shortcoming, they learn to adjust to their needs. The main character of the movie is Kak (Soram Ebrahim) who is known by the nickname Satellite. He is a 13-year-old entrepreneur whose main skill is setting up satellite for news hungry refugees. We don’t see his parents (if they are still alive) or any relative. It appears that Satellite like other kids who work for him is an orphan. He has a very loyal assistant, Pasheo (Saddam Hossein Feysal) who is another victim of mine explosion; his right leg is nonfunctional, but he also has learned how effectively replace it with a single crutch. The scene where he uses his bad leg as a machine gun to cheer up crying Rega, not only is visually heart-wrenching, but also portrays how these children despite such vastly traumatic lives, have not lost their souls. He does not look at his leg as a handicap; quite naturally, by using it as machine gun, he finds a function for it. Kak with the help of Pasheo leads the refugee camp; forget about the adults, if they have a problem, they turn to Kak. Let’s look at the scene where he trades a sack full of radios and some money to purchase a satellite for a customer, or when he goes to gun market to rent couple of guns right before the invasion. All his activities, however, are not as safe; indeed, one of the main sources of their income is collecting unexploded mines (some of which he used to pay for the guns). The lucrative mine business at time becomes very expensive, Hangao’s arms and Pasheo’s leg. Although it seems he is too busy to ponder on these incidents, or his cynicism may assume this fair price for what they gain. He loves Americans and impatiently waiting for their arrival, which would mean a different life for him. Upon hearing the sound of an American helicopter, he announces "the sound of an American passport." Kak, like other characters of the movie, goes through an evolution; he falls in love with Agrin, her mesmerizing serenity overwhelms him, he offers her all he had, but deeply swallowed by her despondent past, she is too lugubrious to have an emotional response. Agrin’s suicide completes his dreariness. The movie brilliantly crystallizes his evolution in the final scene where, Satellite, to the amazement of Pasheo, turns his back while the American soldiers are passing by. It is very important to note that while the movie is explicitly antiwar, the director does not let it slip into a “political statement”, the final scene is a strong indication of his tight control. Few critics have mentioned that the title of the movie refers to liberation from death. Although this is partly true, the title appears to go beyond this implication. Turtle represents a low life creature with no sense and understanding that lives for a century. Flying, on the other hand, has an implication of “ascent” which, in the Persian culture, is a mystic metaphor; a movement of transcends, a movement to eternity. This subject is ubiquitous in Rumi (it is also one of the main themes in Kiarostami’s masterpiece “The Wind Will carry Us”(1991)). The title essentially refers to the evolutionary process that Agrin goes through; when she flies off the cliff, she breaks down the mundane chains that have firmly tied her agonizing life down to the earth. It is interesting that while we see her jumping off the cliff, we never see her descent. Another misconception in some of the reviews is the way the word “forbidden” has been conceived by the critics. When Satellite is channel surfing to get to the news, he goes through channels like MTV with semi-naked singers. In Islam, looking at semi-naked woman is Haram (which often is being translated as forbidden). There is a sense that the reviewers believe these scenes are forbidden because of some government rule, one critic even mentioned Saddam (though he never led a theocracy, his government was quite secular). In English there is no good word for Haram, the closest word is probably non-kosher, which has its religious overtone. When the older men turn their head away from the TV, it is not in disgust as mentioned by one critic, it is because the scene was against their religious teachings. Also, at the end, when Pasheo tells Satellite the kids are up there and looking at the forbidden channels with the American, it does not mean that the American brought the kids freedom, and now they can look at the TV channels which were instructed against it, but quite the opposite, it suggests that with the arrival of Americans, came the superfluous values. In “Iron Horse”(1924) while John Ford cherished the extension of the transcontinental railroad, which brought civilization to the west, he noted that along came the brothels and gambling. The themes are there, although the time has changed.

[edit] Awards

Glass Bear, Best Feature Film and Peace Film Award, Berlin International Film Festival, 2005.
Golden Seashell, Best Film, San Sebastián International Film Festival, 2004.
Special Jury Award, Chicago International Film Festival, 2004.
International Jury and Audience Awards, São Paulo International Film Festival, 2004.
La Pieza Award, Best Film, Mexico City International Contemporary Film Festival, 2005.
Audience Award, Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2005.
Golden Prometheus, Best Film, Tbilisi International Film Festival, 2005.
Aurora Award, Tromsø International Film Festival, 2005.
Golden Butterfly, Isfahan International Festival of Films for Children, 2004.