Turtles Can Fly

Herald rating: ****

The 2000 Iranian film A Time For Drunken Horses was a gobsmacking cine-verite drama set among the homeless Kurdish smugglers who work the snowbound border country between Iran and Iraq.

Director Ghobadi, himself an Iranian Kurd, sets this, his third feature, in Iraq, forcefully underlining the fact that ethnic identity is far from being synonymous with politically dictated nationality.

The film's Kurds are the Iraqis most hideously abused by Saddam Hussein, and the story, set in the days just before the American invasion, is about that oddest of communities - one looking forward to war.

In their refugee settlement, everyone is either juvenile (and orphaned) or geriatric. The only non-elderly adult is a schoolteacher who is something of a halfwit and whom the kids ignore.

The real person in charge is one of the older kids, Soran (Ebrahim), known as Satellite for his ability to source used satellite dishes that will bring news of the American advance.

Satellite organises the camp children into a chilling fundraising initiative: harvesting unexploded mines for sale.

There's something sad about his character, forced into premature adulthood. But that's nothing compared with the suffering of the mysterious trio who show up from an unspecified hell.

Agrin (Latif) is accompanied by the armless Henkov (Feyssal) and blind, 2-year-old Risa. Externally, she is unharmed but slowly we become aware that her eerily graceful self-possession conceals a deep trauma.

Ghobadi, who worked as an assistant to the Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, knows how to harvest arresting images in a hostile environment.

The film is a skilful blend of heart-rending pathos and accomplished farce.

In one of many funny sequences, Satellite tunes in the camp elders' television and, searching for CNN, skims past a scantily clad pop singer on MTV: the old men flinch and turn away from "the prohibited channel", apparently unaware that, with Saddam still clinging to power, CNN is banned too.

The film extracts potent performances from its artless young cast, even the ones who seem to utter every line in a high-pitched scream. It's devoid of the satisfying uplift we might require from movie climaxes, but then again so are the young blighted lives it documents.

Brilliant and disturbing.

CAST: Soran Ebrahim, Avaz Latif, Hirsh Feyssal
DIRECTOR: Bahman Ghobadi
RUNNING TIME: 98 mins
RATING: M
SCREENING: Academy from Thursday