Popular reviews

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★★★ 3

  Simply devastating! It is always the children who must pay the ultimate price for adults greed for oil, money, power, natural resources or political agendas!

  No country that has ever installed landmines can ever claim to be religious, civilized, moral, ethical or humane without revealing themselves to be outright hypocrites!

  Director Bahman Ghobadi created a film featuring real refugees with no acting pedigrees whatsoever! These children are the real deal! They're not acting so much as reliving the horrors of their lives! You can look into their faces and see the pained expressions, their innocence forever lost and at the same time you're impressed by their astounding resilience!

  The realism captured on film was so devastatingly real the cast and…

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  Review by Michael James ★★★★★ 3

  A powerfully poignant and heart wrenching cinema, one which honestly documents the harsh realities and the chaotic war torn life in Iraq-Turkey bordered refugee camp, through the eyes of displaced innocent children. Despite of all the physical-emotional devastation and brutality around, the movie still manages to find hopeful humane touches of humorous moments. The performances from the entire group children was simply fantastic. The entire finale sequence takes you on a harrowing experience. It’s a MUST WATCH thought provoking anti-war drama.

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  Review by V. Lepistö ★★★★★ 2

  While I'm laying on my bed, watching Bahman Ghobadi's Turles Can Fly and crying like it would help anything, Iraqi forces together with the help of USA and Kurdish Peshmerga forces are trying to conquer Mosul from Daesh. There's approximately 1,5 million civilians trapped inside the city and UN fears that Daesh might use them as human shields - nevertheless, it is impossible to leave or to stay. When we jump to Syria, we can hear the rumbling from the sky as Putin's air forces are dropping bombs over Aleppo, helping dictator Bashar Al-Assad who has used chemical weapons against his own people. At the same time Turkey is backing up JIhadist groups who USA supports too and at least…

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  Review by Booligan 🛸 ★★★★½

  86%

  Agrin: "Teach them math and science."
  Satellite: "They know math and science. They have to learn how to shoot now!"

  All of the child actors in this movie were actual refugees. This was also the first film to be made in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

  🏆Awards: 23 wins & 7 nominations
  ⏳ Runtime: 93 minutes (minus credits)

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  Review by eylül ★★★★★

  "Filmimi diktatör ve faşistlerin politikalarına kurban edilen tüm masum dünya çocuklarına ithaf etmek istiyorum."

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  Review by Len Fearnside ★★★★½ 6

  Part of Lise's wonderful 30 Countries in 30 Days Challenge. Rest of my list is here: boxd.it/cBLo

  Well you know you are doing something right when you make a movie that is pretty much 97% about kids and I, the guy who dislikes most everything by children, for children, or about children, find it absolutely riveting.

  The story of a large group of displaced Iraqis near the time of the impending US invasion to get Saddam (round 2) and while there are adults around of course, this film is about the refugee children. They run the show and everything that happens in the film.

  I need to talk about the lead female character here, Agrin. Incredible. She wore every single…

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ✝️ ★★★★½

  The first time I went to an almost empty movie theater at the age of 14 was this impactful treasure, a "foreign film" that opened my mind to new possibilities, and the images have not left my mind even if I saw it for the first time 9 years ago. This extremely powerful and realistic war feature will find the way to be unforgettable from your point of view, because it has a strong universal appeal through eyes of innocence.

  92/100

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  Review by Daryan Ahmad Abdulla ★★★★★ 6

  I did not plan to watch this today, I actually even started ´Autumn tale´ by Eric Rohmer, but after starting it I found out there were no English subtitles and this is one of the best things that could have happened as instead I went on to watch Turtles Can Fly which has been on my watchlist for a while as I am Kurdish. I started watching it alone, then I asked my mother if she had seen it and she said that she had heard of it and I suggested that we should all just watch it together and that we did. My parents made some popcorn and we all sat down and watched it from start to finish…

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  Review by Mousa ;) ★★★★½ 1

  الفيلم يؤكد مدى أهمية السينما للمُجمتع!
  هوس السياسة والسُلطة تصنع الحرب وإذا حدثت
  لن يدفع ثمنها سواء الأطفال الأبرياء 💔 ')

  "لحظة يكون الموُت فيها لغة الخلاص"!

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  Review by smallclone ★★★★

  Another watch of this superb film. This was my initial review 5 years ago and my thoughts haven't changed much:

  "A very difficult watch. The troubles of a group of youngsters in a Kurdish refugee camp on the Iraq / Turk border during the US "liberation" of Iraq. One of the most solemn, melancholic movies I've ever seen. It truly captures the horrors of being an isolated, nomadic group of people that have no place in their country, or any country, due to conflict and prejudice. This film has left it's mark on me, and anybody who doesn't "get" why refugees should be housed not hated should regard this as required viewing. One warning: there's not many payoffs here"

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  Review by rahul ranjan ★★★★★

  97/100

  There's bleak, there's bleaker, then there's 'Haneke' (bleakest) and then comes Turtles can fly.

  Set in a world that has suffered wars before - the wreckage of them is everywhere, spent shells piled like cord-wood, disabled tanks tossed together like so many discarded toys.

  The elders of the village hope that great Army (American Force) will come and remove Saddam Hussein from power.

  In such a hopeless world we follow around this anything-but-lonely kid Satellite, and he takes a particular shine to a pretty named Agrin. Agrin is traumatized by Saddam's soldiers, she is far beyond being impressed by anything, and is in fact suicidal. Such bleak themes with child actors is a tough nut to crack even for…

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  Review by Calendula ★★★★

  CAN YOU GIVE ME A TISSUE NOW😭😭😭