Turtles Can Fly

Turtles Can Fly was the first film to be released in Iraq following the fall of Sadaam Hussein and our screening marks the tenth anniversary of that cataclysmic event and its aftermath.

Written and directed by Bahman Gobadi, an Iraqi Kurd, the film does not set out in any overt sense to grind a political axe against those with power and military might. Instead it seeks to open a window onto the world of the long-suffering Kurdish people and specifically those internally-displaced into a refugee camp on the Iraqi-Turkish border on the eve of the US invasion.

The central characters are children and adolescents who, despite the harrowing conditions in which they exist and their individual physical difficulties and psychological traumas, manage to hollow out lives for themselves in this apocalyptic setting. The acting is sublime and none more so than the performance given by a sightless 3-year old. Turtles Can Fly may leave you tearful, angry, shocked and/or numb but it is not to be missed.