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PLOT: A group of Kurdish refugee "lost boys" -- who eke out a living just before the invasion of Iraq by digging up American-made landmines -- find their lives disrupted by a girl, a mysterious toddler and an armless boy who sees the future.
Take Peter Pan and his "lost boys" and subject them to the worst realities facing children in wartorn Iraq, and you'll have something of the incongruous mix of whimsy and horror that is Turtles Can Fly.
Set in Northern Iraq pre-American invasion, and starring a cast of actual Kurdish refugee children, it tells the story of "Satellite" (Soran Ebrahim) a canny, Artful Dodgerish hustler who leads his gang of boys in the daily struggle for survival.
Their chief means of support: Digging up U.S.-made landmines and selling them. It's no surprise that many of the children are missing limbs.
A naturally-comic character, the chatterbox Satellite is a leader even to the tribal elders, who get him to acquire a satellite dish for them and then cluelessly badger him to translate CNN's reports as war inevitably draws closer. With one eye on the upcoming crossfire, he cheerfully deals at the local market for assault weapons.
Complications ensue with the arrival of three new children -- a tough armless boy named Pashov (who invariably prevails in fights by banging his combatants with his noggin) Pashov's sister Agrin and a toddler of mysterious relation to the other two.
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Satellite is alternately hostile to Pashov and fascinated by the invariably accurate visions of the future which flash through his head. And he's infatuated with the morose Agrin. She awkwardly rebuffs his tenderness and attention, and is ultimately revealed to be even more tragically scarred by the war than the amputee boys.
Iranian director Bahman Gohbadi is to be congratulated on a couple of counts -- the first being that Turtles Can Fly is not polemical in any way. Yes, the mines are American, but Satellite is steadfastly pro-Bush throughout, to the point that he is mocked for it by the tribal elders. And the arrival of the Americans is treated as a liberation by the Kurds (after their treatment at the hands of Saddam, how could it not?).
The second is that he manages to evoke tremendous humanity and generosity of spirit from the characters in this Armageddon-esque carnage. The children themselves operate on an all-for-one moral code (shared by the adults), each death or maiming evoking wails of grief. It's a gritty and ultimately ennobling picture of human beings making the most out of the worst circumstances.
That he does this while evoking wry humour reminiscent of The Little Rascals makes Turtles Can Fly an uplifting emotional balancing act.
(This film is rated 14-A)