Turtles Can Fly tells the sad story of Kurdish refugees through the fall of Saddam Hussein and leading up to the American invasion of Iraq. Despite its focus on such a tense political issue, the film makes no attempt to form any solid opinion of either supporting or opposing the war. Instead we are drawn into the precarious lives of children refugees led by a boy they call Satellite as they face the hardships and daily struggles of life.
The cinematography perfectly captures the bleak and dying landscape of a small village located along the Iraqi-Turkish border. This atmosphere, which is maintained throughout the entirety of the film, serves to highlight the similarly tragic lives of the refugees. Left with no place to call their homeland, the Kurdish people lived repressed and hard lives under the regime of Saddam. Yet with the fall of Saddam, they are neither content nor discontented. They seem dispirited - as if nothing could change the hardships they've faced. News of the American invasion does not bring them hope. Even the children have learned that daily they must struggle to survive.
We see all these terrors faced by the refugees through the lives of children. This ironic spin in casting makes this movies unique and flawlessly portrays the struggles of these people. Seeing all of this suffereing through the once innocent eyes of the chilrdren makes the situation even harder to face and at the same time more tangible and real. In the end, we see American soldiers running past Sattelite and his friend, not sparing a glance. But that has been the story of the Kurds: always disregarded and without any land to call their own.
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