Hiresh Feysal Rahman

Known to everyone by the nickname "Satellite,"the boy has a curiously endearing cockiness that only partially masks thekind of youthful angst that's unavoidable for a kid with crooked teethand cockeyed glasses. He's strong-willed and industrious -- employing andsupporting the village children, whom he enjoys bossing around as they digup and dismantle land mines to sell in the underground arms market. Butultimately he's still 13 years old, which is why he becomes obsessed witha quiet, outwardly impassive, inwardly haunted orphan girl from the refugeecamp that has sprung up nearby.

The third feature by Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi ("Maroonedin Iraq," "A Time for Drunken Horses"), "Turtles CanFly" is a tragic yet bittersweet, simple yet spellbinding slice oflife's uncertainty. Set in a rugged, wind-swept desert mountain regionwhere the coming war is only the latest challenge to Kurdish fortitude,the film envelops you completely in Satellite's scrappy existence amongtent villages, mud houses, rusted-out tank wreckage and scrap-metal artilleryshells.

But even more significantly, it captures the war-tornpsyches of its young characters -- none more so than the girl Satelliteclumsily woos (Avaz Latif), who is led toward catastrophe by traumatizingflashbacks of an Iraqi attack on her village that left her emotionallyscarred, left her seemingly clairvoyant brother without arms, and saddledthem both with caring for a half-blind 3-year-old.

Continue reading: Turtles Can Fly Review