Indigo-Daisy

I had the opportunity to watch this DVD a few weeks ago.

"Turtles can fly" is a film written and directed Bahman Ghobad , a Kurdish film maker from Iran.

The film takes place in a refugee camp along the Iraq-Turkish border before the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003 and consists of mainly child actors who themselves are all refugees.

The camp is made up of mostly orphans who survive on funds they receive selling unexploded mines after spending days carefully sifting through the mine fields. Many children have already lost a hand, leg, arm or other appendage in the process.

This was so hard for me to watch as I see these beautiful children against a harsh landscape reflecting the remnants of war. Forgotten children who must fend for themselves as their plight is invisible to the rest of the world.

Although Ghobad was careful to not be overtly political in this film, the message was clear, the effects of war run further and deeper than most people can even comprehend. In war, there are no second chances, the pain lasts an entire lifetime and is then passed down from generation to generation. Healing, if it exists comes slowly and some never recover.

It was heartbreaking and I shed a few tears, and I hope that as I spend a few minutes thinking about children like those in this film and sending love to them that they will somehow feel my love in their dreams.