TURTLES CAN FLY

(LAKPOSHTHA HAM PARVAZ MIKONAND)

San Francisco Premiere

Iraq/Iran 2004 | 96mins | 35mm Color | Kurdish w/E.S.

ãOne of the greatest anti-war films of all timeä is how IFC Films describes Bahman Ghobadiâs (A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES) look at a contemporary Iraq stuck between old world and new, stones and satellites, violence and hope. In Iraqâs Kurdish north, Kak Satellite is a respected ãelectronics technicianä who fixes the satellite antennas that bring remote villages their only news of the outside world. Heâs also just thirteen, and living through a brutal war.

Moving from town to town, Kak dodges periodic gunfire to install satellite dishes, often deleting (or adding) more ãadult-orientedä channels for village leaders. His life is soon changed by the arrival of two war-scarred youths: Henkov, a boy whose arms were lost in a mine explosion, and Agrin, a girl whose scars are less obvious, but just as deep.

A strikingly nuanced view of a situation most Americans only understand through sound bites and satellite feeds, TURTLES CAN FLY lets its images communicate what a thousand speeches could never say. While working in actual footage of the war (in one scene, American soldiers interact with the actors, offering one a chunk of a Saddam statue), its focus is wisely never just ãthe war,ä but rather the way that civilians survive within it. ãEvery life counts,ä Ghobadi insists, and TURTLES CAN FLY offers cinematic proof.

—Jason Sanders