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Product Details
Too few films capture war from the point of view of the children who endure it--perhaps because it's awful to contemplate. But Turtles Can Fly manages to be both heartbreaking and galvanizing in its depiction of young Iraqis waiting for the U.S. Army to roll over their village on the border of Turkey. A boy called Satellite (Soran Ebrahim), so called because he knows how to hook up a satellite dish, divides his time turning himself into a big operator--he commands a small army of children who search the fields for land mines they can sell to the U.N.--and wooing a pretty but haunted girl named Agrin (Avaz Latif) whose brother has no arms but can see the future. Satellite's mixture of scheming and genuine compassion drives the movie forward; it's impossible not to become engrossed in his courage and ambition, even as the world crumbles around him. Since the U.S. has linked its fate with that troubled country, learning a little about the Iraqi people would be good for everyone involved; fortunately, Turtles Can Fly is more than just an educational opportunity. Rich humor helps balance the harrowing circumstances, making the movie a riveting experience. --Bret Fetzer
Product Reviews
 (5 stars) - extraordinary!!
This movie is extraordinary by every measure and a must see for any serious and caring person. It is as poetic, profound and timeless a story about the hearts and lives of children and youth in a world of ceaseless war and boundaryless inhumanity. When adults surrender their meaningful civilized role model and become submerged in craven accommodation to violence and gainful survival, children are sacrificed and must construct their own grotesque and angst filled society to survive. It is hard to imagine how such a story as "Turtles Can Fly" could be visually imagined and translated into a movie of such breathtaking originality and power. Each character, each shot, each scene, each step in the compassionate revalation of its story is riveting and awe inspiring in production and sheer beauty.
Left to scratching the unfertile earth of a Kurdish border village for unexploded mines and ordinance just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, bands of children work together to earn pittance from a weapons merchant, in their weapons economy, to just get by. Many, armless and legless, and living in traditional scattered village hovels surrounded by abandoned war machines, bombs and discarded cannon shells, the children are organized and directed by a precocious teen who uses his skill with TV dish technology to leverage the village elders for resources and respect for his devoted and dependent band of children. A 12 year old girl, always carrying a near 2 year old infant. is the center piece of the story. Her grace and sad mystery mesmerizes the teen leader who is in search of another youth who is alleged to "see" the future. The community is wholly preoccupied with anticipating the impending US invasion that might change their circumstances in the face of the repressive and savage Saddam regime that has wrought the injury and individual scars on the region's peoples. The protagonist girl carries a wrenching secret and the story of her relationship to the child she carts about becomes the center of the tragedy that slowly unfolds. Her armless brother is the seer, the witness and respository of all the communities losses that he contains within himself, and, the tender but stern guardian of his sister's secret and the infant child. An innocent and passing search for 3 meters of rope that the girl pursues which the teen protagonist provides becomes an haunting plot prop that is essential to the story becomes decisive as the lives and losses of the lead characters unfolds. This is one of the finest and most moving pieces of modern art that I have ever experienced and a monument to the perspective changing power of genius filmmaking and social human caring imaginable in our world!
(5 stars) - an outstanding motion picture
Turtles Can Fly is an especially good movie in that we get a rarely seen view of war from the children whose country is being ravaged by it. The performances in this film are nothing less than superlative and outstanding in every way; and I was fascinated by the way Iraqi towns, markets and refugee villages looked and operated on a social level. The cinematography is excellent; and the choreography couldn't be better either. This is a powerful film!
When the action starts we meet Satellite (Soran Ebrahim), a young boy in a small Kurdish town in Iraq just before the most recent Iraqi War. Satellite is, in essence, the leader of the village refugee children and many of the adults, too; and for such a young man he does an incredibly fine job of shepherding the flock. Satellite gets his name mostly because he is a local expert at hooking up Iraqi villages in the area to satellite television so that they can get the news. Satellite's right hand man (so to speak, they're all adolescents or children), Pashow (Saddam Hossein Feysal), helps Satellite anyway he can and Pashow is also Satellite's best friend and confidante. While Satellite wheels and deals, trading land mines for weapons for the soon to start war with America, he is also eyeing a pretty but very troubled young girl named Agrin (Avaz Latif). Agrin has a great deal of bitterness over the recent past; it seems that Agrin and her armless brother Hengov (Hiresh Feysal Rahman) lost their parents to murderers who left their own very small child behind--and now Agrin and Hengov are stuck raising the child of the people who killed their parents.
Hengov doesn't mind being "Uncle Hengov" to the young boy. He has much love in his heart; he also has an uncanny knack for making predictions about the future that almost always come true. Even Satellite uses Hengov's prediction about exactly when the Iraqi War will start.
Of course, from here the plot can go just about anywhere. Will the war start when Hengov predicts it will? How will Hengov and Agrin ever end their dispute about caring for the young boy left behind by the people who killed their parents? Will Satellite be able to make Agrin his girlfriend? No plot spoilers here--watch this excellent film and find out!
It may seem as if I've given too much of the plot away but when you watch this film you will know I really haven't. This is, as I wrote above, a rather powerful movie that you won't forget anytime soon. I wish that there were extras on the DVD; the only "extra" we get besides scene selection is a small number of "previews" that doesn't count for much. I would have loved director commentary on this film.
Turtles Can Fly paints a distressing portrait of just how badly children can be affected by terrible war. This is a great film for people interested in social causes and children's rights in foreign countries especially; and people interested in the Iraqi War may also like this movie.
(5 stars) - A World Away
From start to finish, this movie shows a world that only a handful of Americans have ever been exposed to, personally or in film. The tragedy of war is shown from a refugee-child's perspective, and depicts a world of homelessness, filth and survival by whatever means available.
Imagine, for instance, that the only means of income was to send your children into a minefield and gather mines for sale in the marketplace. Image your child trading these mines for guns in order to defend the camp.
Revealed in this wonderful movie is the innocence of a child lost, the daily challenge to stay alive and the absence of food, potable water and a way to stay clean, even to a minimum.
The overriding message is one of hopelessness. These children have the where-to-all to survive, they have intelligence and motivation, but they have no hope because they have zero opportunity. And when the US troops finally arrive, I was left with the question, "Did their arrival make a difference?" I don't know. But what I do know is that we can learn a lot from these children about life, about survival and about hope. For when we see hopelessness, they can can clearly see a glimmer of hope.
 (4 stars) - Vivid reality
This was a wonderful movie. Most of us have an abstract, vague idea of the miserable and inhumane conditions endured by Kurdish (and other)children left abandoned/orphaned because of the war. This movie opens up a curtain into the reality of their lives. It is sad, compelling and well done.
(5 stars) - Humanity Without boundaries
Awesome movie. Incredible 'humaness' in the face of menacing forces. Human forces and strenght nurtured from kids childhood to adulthood.Growing up is hard to do, and to achieve. I recommend this movie and Ali Soua about street kids in Moroccco. My 8 year-old also enjoyed this movie immensely; few months after viewing it, she still once in awhile talks about it... particularly about the little girl in the movie... Powerful
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