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Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi delivers a gut punch to audiences with his harrowing drama Turtles Can Fly, set on the Iraqi-Turkish border before and during the American invasion of Iraq. Resources are scarce, and Ghobadi heightens his detailed accounting of scrappy existence along the border by focusing on the children, particularly the boy army of scavengers—many physically damaged—who collect land mines for sale or trade. A pathological liar named Satellite is a leader among the boys, and harbors a burgeoning crush on a psychologically scarred girl named Agrin. Agrin's brother Hengov is armless; their cockeyed young charge has been blinded. The children accept the dangers of their harsh surroundings, for they have no choice. Rays of hope cut through the fog of war. Besides persistent survival, Satellite boasts a festive bike festooned with colorful trimmings and bike horns, and though Agrin, for secretive reasons, hates the blind boy with whom she lives, her armless brother ministers to the boy with patient devotion. Bouts of subjectivity and a magical realist development (one of the children can predict the future) give the otherwise neorealist film an even more powerful impact.
