Turtles Can Fly is a 2004 film from Iraq. It is the first film to be filmed in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It tells the story of the lives of youth in a Kurdish refugee camp. The sad quality of the story is how while all the stories appear to be about very adult themes and occurrences, the protagonists are all youth no older than 15 years of age.
The main protagonist is a boy by the name of Satellite. The quality of Satellite is the fact that he is the leader of the youth within the camp but also he is one of the few speakers of English (though it is a rudimentary form of English at best) within the camp as well as being one of the only persons with the knowledge of how to install satellites in order for the town to watch news on the television. While obviously caring he is brash and also a manipulative person of the youth.
The girl that he falls in love with is Agrin, a girl caring for a blind toddler that she was forced to bare after being gang raped. The sorrow in her life is the fact that she is forced to care for the toddler but she is also forced to continue to see the product of her gang rape. In the end she ends up killing the toddler, but also killing herself afterwards. To Agrin, the child is not and never will be her child and she cannot bare dealing with him.
Agrin's older brother is Hengov, a youth that seems to be capable of telling the future. Yet while being able to tell the future it seems that he only is able to predict it and not change it. The entire film is about youth being forced to be adult.
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