YES BLOG

Turtles Can Fly

The outstanding viewing experience for all of us on the jury was the film by Bahman Ghobadi, ‘Turtles Can Fly’; a story of Kurdish children living in a refugee camp on the borders of Iran and Iraq, many of them orphans, earning a pittance by collecting land mines and selling them to the UN.  As a consequence many of them have lost their arms or legs.  The young, brilliant actors were all children from the camps.  The cinematography, direction, and unity of form, content and intention are all stunningly realized and, despite it subject matter, it also manages to be very funny.  We decide, unanimously, to award this film the ‘Best Picture’ prize.  The ‘Best Director’ award goes to Turkish director Fatih Akin, for his film ‘Against The Wall’ about Turkish immigrants living in Germany; the ‘Best First Film’ to Austrian Ruth Mader, for ‘Struggle’, her austere, deliberately-paced portrait of the lives of migrant laborers; and we decide to additionally award ‘Best Actor’ to Sandor Csanyi for his mesmerizing performance in ‘Kontroll’ and ‘Best Actress’ jointly to Dana Ivgy and Ronit Elkabetz in Israeli director Keren Yedaya’s film; ‘Or’, about a prostitute and her daughter.

By the end of the festival a strange theme has emerged in many of the films; children forced to ‘parent’ their own dysfunctional parents.  It is like witnessing a generation robbed of their childhoods, mopping up their parents’ mistakes.

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