Product Description

From acclaimed director Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses) comes the first film shot in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Heart-wrenching as well as spirit-raising (The Hollywood Reporter), Turtles Can Fly mixes humor and tragedy to startling effect, resulting in a very timely masterpiece (TV Guide) about children struggling to survive in an endless war zone. On the Iraqi-Turkish border, enterprising 13-year-old 'satellite (Soran Ebrahim) is the de facto leader of a Kurdish village, thanks to his ability to install satellite dishes and translate news of the pending US invasion. Organizing fellow orphans into landmine-collection teams so that they can eke out a living, heis all business until the arrival of a clairvoyant boy and his quiet, beautiful sister.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29447 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-09-20
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Kurdish
• Subtitled in: English
• Running time: 98 minutes

Amazon.com
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

From The New Yorker
The first impressive thing about Bahman Ghobadi's movie is that it got made at all. Not many directors, perhaps, would choose to film in the Kurdish encampments of northern Iraq, where life has been a mix of the ramshackle, the uncertain, and the downright lethal. The story is set in the days before the arrival of American forces in 2003-a cause of much rumor and hope. Satellite (Soran Ebrahim) is a boy of thirteen, but he has grown old before his time, and everybody in the village, adults as well as children, relies on his initiative. This is a world of losses: adults who have lost authority, and children who have lost parents and limbs. We watch Satellite as, true to his name, he brings television (and therefore news of war) to a clamoring community, and, far worse, we watch the teen-age Agrin (Avaz Latif) try, with awful persistence, to put a stop to her own suffering and to that of her illegitimate child. All this should be grim beyond bearing, yet the film treads carefully, and even lightly, through its tribulations. Never has childhood seemed more weirdly resilient, or less cute. In Kurdish. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker