Turtles Can Fly

From the point of view of a Kurdish director, Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of Kurdish refugee children living on their own on the Iraq-Turkey border during the eve of the US Invasion of Iraq. What's striking is that these children live in tents and make money by collecting landmines and are just as responsible as little adults. They buy weapons, fix satellites, and deliver information to adults as if they were one of them. The children are lead by a loud, but hard working boy called Satellite. Satellite is a passionate character yet his ego comes in as his small drawback. By the end of the movie though, the viewer will have a deep connection with Satellite, wondering what's in store for his future after political matters changed his life forever in a period of a few days.

Despite how emotional and well directed the movie is, there are a few quarrels I have with it. For one, the acting is not consistent and can range from moving to annoying. The son of the girl Agrin (yes, the reality of the refugee camp is that there are many tragedies such as the easily seen missing limbs from half the children to the invisible emotional scars and products of rape), who is a very little boy, is who I found most annoying. While his looks are cute, his crying and acting are not good and got on my nerves. Satellite too sometimes feels awkward, although this is made up for in certain scenes where he shows an abundance of charisma. Another problem I have is with Henkov, Satellite's rival at the beginning of the movie. I did not like that the director had him be able to predict the future, a cheap and unexplainable plot device. I was wishfully thinking through out, "maybe he was able to understand English, heard news from the television, and that's really why he could predict so much", but that didn't turn out to be the case. Then there's the ending, which I won't spoil, but I found to be too extreme. I did like the part though where Satellite turns his back on the US soldiers, loosing faith after working so hard on an empty expectation.

It seems that I wrote a lot negative on this movie, but that is only because I found it really enjoyable and couldn't ignore the few problems that held it down. It's an interesting insight into a Kurdish depiction of the American occupation of Iraq. It's not one-sided or heated and does a great job of describing the Iraqi expectation of American involvement. Whether you're interested in Turtles Can Fly from a political or dramatic context, it excels at both and is certainly worth watching.