Soran Ebrahim in ‘Turtles Can Fly’
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Suffer the Little Children
One of the best movies of last year, Turtles Can Fly never played on any movie screens in Fort Worth or even Dallas. This is both regrettable and understandable; this crusher of a film was shot at a refugee camp for orphaned kids (many of them maimed by land mines) on the Iraqi-Turkish border. As Saddam Hussein’s regime totters under the threat of U.S. invasion, the main authority in the camp is a 13-year-old boy given the English nickname of Satellite (Soran Ebrahim) for his ability to barter on the black market and bring television reception to the villages — we see him hooking up the elders so they can watch the imminent American invasion on CNN. Satellite’s life is changed by three new arrivals: an armless boy named Hengov (Abdol Rahman Karim) with apparent psychic powers, Hengov’s sister Agrin (Avaz Latif), and a baby boy who turns out to be not their brother but Agrin’s son, the result of her being raped by Iraqi soldiers.
Iranian Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi finds plenty of grim realities surrounding the camp, but he’s at his best when he finds these kids trying to carve out childhoods for themselves amidst all the suffering and death. The image of the baby boy joyfully throwing turtles into a pond is an indelibly heartrending reminder of all the children’s lives blighted by the war, and we know it won’t end when the Americans finally arrive. Ghobadi’s artistry continues to flourish under impossible circumstances, and that hopeful sign makes this cry of despair from the Third World bearable.
Turtles Can Fly screens at 6:30pm Wed at TCU, Sid Richardson Bldg, 2955 S University Dr, FW. Admission is free. Call 817-257-7810.
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