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…

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…

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…

‏Turtles Can Fly
هو فيلم إيراني للمخرج الايراني باهمان غوبادي
الفيلم يتحدث عن المحنة التي مر بها الاكراد إبان حقبة الاوضاع العراقية السابقة للتدخل الامريكي 
في الفيلم يتم التركيز على الاطفال 
بطل الفيلم طفل أسمه (ستلايات ) لانه لديه خبرة كافية في تركيب صحون الستلايات وغيرها من الاجهزة 
تكمن أهمية الفيلم في رمزيته حيث يصور الاطفال الايتام المساكين في المخيمات وما يواجهونه من صعاب في ظل غياب الاهل والاصدقاء فيلم تتجسد فيه معاني و أبشع صور الحرب ليس في الحرب أي صورة جميلة ولن تكون هناك أي جمالية 
أول فيلم يصور بعد سقوط النظام العراقي آنذاك 
لذا كان للفيلم رمزية قوية من ناحية السياسية 
ومع ذلك لم يتم تسيس الفيلم بشكل يجعلك لا تريد مشاهدته أو تمييع القضية الاساسية والمنطقية…

I have to give Bahman Ghobadi one specific piece of credit and that is he is one fantastic director of children. Not only that but the combination of children and war that he is intent on examining throughout his films has always provided stark contrasts in an unfortunately harsh reality. In Turtles Can Fly I feel Ghobadi has improved on some aspects of his filmmaking past from his previous film A Time for Drunken Horses but then also faltered on others.

Here he certainly gains more sympathy and emotional kick from his characters in this film but to an almost too great of an extent. Films such as these can get overtly depressing until it becomes a detriment and perhaps…

Bahman Ghobadi once again paints celluloid with the colours of despair and misery to highlight the ever-resilient Kurdish people as they live off the wastes of war. Focusing more on the daily struggle of maimed orphan children than the politics of the imminent American invasion of Iraq, we follow the industrious exploits of Soran, nicknamed Satellite as he rallies together his own army of fellow children to imbue them with a sense of purpose in their seemingly meaningless lives. He is crushing on Agrin, who has recently arrived in the area with her armless brother, Hengov (a clairvoyant of sorts), and a baby who we discover (via flashback) is hers as the result of rape from soldiers in her home…

Ingat balita Suriah berkaos merah terdampar di pantai Turki yang sempat menggemparkan dunia 2015 silam? Bocah itu dan keluarganya lari dari negaranya yang sedang berkecamuk perang saudara, meminta suaka ke daratan Eropa. Alan Kurdi, namanya. Bocah Suriah dari suku Kurdi.

Sekilas tentang suku Kurdi, bangsa tanpa negara. Jumlahnya sekitar 30 juta, berdiaspora sebagian besar di Timur Tengah. Kurdi adalah suku yang mendiami perbukitan dan sulit ditaklukan oleh Yunani, Romawi, Persia, dan Kekaisaran Islam sekalipun. Setelah Perang Dunia I tatkala kolonialisme Eropa memetakan wilayah berdasarkan negara-negara, Irak, Iran, Suriah, Turki, maka suku Kurdi menjadi terbelah berai. Dalam politik modern nasib mereka juga tertindas. Mustafa Attaturk, bapak Turki, tidak mengakui bangsa dan bahasa Kurdi (bahasa Kurdi dilarang dalam kurikulum sekolah). Tak kalah…