Turtles Can Fly

The first film to be made in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the devastating Turtles Can Fly is set in a Kurdish refugee camp on the Iraqi-Turkish border just before the US invasion in spring 2003. Director Bahman Ghobadi concentrates on a handful of orphaned children and their efforts to survive the appalling conditions: there's the entrepreneurial Satellite, the armless clairvoyant Henkov, and his traumatised sister Agrin, who herself is responsible for a blind toddler. Winner of 2005 Berlin International Film Festival Peace Film Award.