Turtles Can Fly

Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi has already proven he knows about borders and the dangerous lives children lead there, with his 2000 debut A Time For Drunken Horses, a film set in a nameless mountain pass separating Iran and Iraq. Turtles Can Fly was made as a co-production between those two countries (previously an unthinkable prospect), and while avoiding any mention of politics might have been safest, Ghobadi goes a different route. Much of Turtles is set in the days leading up to the American invasion of Iraq, a prospect that fills its characters with dread. They don't hate America, and they certainly don't love Saddam Hussein, whose past attacks on the Kurds have made gas masks almost ubiquitous. But Ghobadi's characters recognize that no matter how the war comes out, it's bound to be another instance in which powers far removed from their daily lives determine their fates.

It's the children who suffer first, and suffer hardest. Ebrahim and his followers prove remarkably resilient. So does a prophetic armless boy who tends to his despondent teenage sister and the blind child that resulted from her rape at the hands of marauding solders. But the resilience only stretches so far, and as the film goes on, Ghobadi's ground-level approach captures just how physically and spiritually exhausting life is for the children of war. Death might come from the sky or from the ground, or it might not come at all, but the prospect of it always lingers. Turtles Can Fly creates a haunting reminder that collateral damage can't always be measured in casualty rates, and that it goes on long after the news cameras have left the scene.

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