Turtles Can Fly

Set in Kurdish territory on the Iraq-Turkey border in the weeks before the U.S. invasion in 2003, this film by an Iranian Kurd, Bahman Ghobadi, looks at war from the perspective of children, but falls somewhat awkwardly between documentary and fable. Just about the only consumables in this village and adjacent refugee camp are leftover military supplies. Thirteen-year-old “Satellite” keeps squads of children busy digging up landmines (many of them consequently missing arms or legs) and exchanges them for guns, or a television dish so the village elders can watch news of the incipient war. He lives in an abandoned armored vehicle, and also has his troop stacking spent artillery shells. He falls for a refugee girl who lives in a tent with two “brothers,” one an armless teen with a gift of prophecy and the other a blind toddler who may be the product of a rape by Saddam’s soldiers. On the one hand, this is an important view into unfamiliar conditions, but on the other it’s a clumsy and confusing narrative which might be taken as hopeless exploitation of the impossible plight of victimized children. Sometimes humorous, sometimes queasily beautiful, it’s worth seeing but not ultimately sufficient to its subject. (2004, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-85.)