Turtles Can Fly

Bahman Ghobadi's second masterpiece, shot in a Kurdish village on the Turkish-Iraqi border on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is about Kurdish children who unearth landmines to sell, led by a thirteen-year-old boy nicknamed Satellite for his skill in mounting satellite dishes. An orphaned girl arrives in the village — a refugee from Halabja — with a small child and an older brother who has lost both arms to a mine. Satellite falls in love at first sight; her past is deeper than any love can reach. The film closes on a tragedy that is not forgotten, in which children's hope turns to silent despair. It won more than fifty international prizes and was the first film shot in Iraq after the fall of Saddam.