Ally Headings - Turtles Can Fly

          While watching Turtles Can Fly, I couldn’t help but compare it to Kandahar. In both films, there are scenes that highlight the life of the children and the obstacles that they are taught to avoid, such as the landmines. Of course, Turtles Can Fly showed their lives a little bit more that in Kandahar, but the ideas are both there. I really like that Turtles Can Fly showed the scene where Satellite’s leg was blown by the landmine. It’s so important for we, as Americans from the United States, to see things like that to better understand what these people face in their daily lives. I believe that the children were living in a refugee camp on the border of Iraq and Turkey, and we could see that they didn’t really have much adult supervision and had to face trials on their own. These kids were around 13 or 14 years old I would guess, but they were forced to behave like full-grown adults, something that Americans like us tend to view as sad, and I felt sorry for them. I also felt a sense of gratitude that I have been lucky enough to have been born and raised in such a country as this, where we, for the most part, have people to look out for us and don’t have to worry about landmines exploding on us.

            I very much liked that the filmmaker utilized a hand held camera. It provided a sense of reality and made it easier for me to believe what I was seeing and to know that people actually deal with these problems every day. I also responded very much to the invasion scene, where the boy lost his arms and the girl was gang raped. Such a tough scene, but such an important part to show and I think it was a good move to show it.

            My question is, why is it called Turtles Can Fly?