Iraq’s Kurdish orphans inspire an Iranian

Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi had no intention of making the first feature film to emerge from postwar Iraq, but the children he met in northern Iraq left him with no choice.

Ghobadi’s compelling film, “Turtles Can Fly,” which follows a group of Iraqi Kurd orphans in the days before the fall of Saddam Hussein, has scooped festival awards in the United States, Spain and Japan and is Iran’s entry for the Oscars.

But it was almost never made.

“I was not supposed to make ‘Turtles Can Fly.’ At that time, I was making an urban film in Tehran just before the war started in Iraq,” said Ghobadi, 36.

Shortly after Hussein’s fall, during a trip to Iraq to show his second feature, “Marooned in Iraq,” Ghobadi was mesmerized by the young Kurds he saw, many maimed by land mines and scarred by the brutality of Hussein’s regime.

“When I saw these children, the issue changed for me. When I returned to Iran, I couldn’t sleep for a while and I realized this is it. I stopped the project and went to Iraq to make this film.”

“This is an antiwar film and my personal view of the U.S. war in Iraq. The film shows real pictures of the lives of the Iraqis today,” he added.

Filmed on location in Iraqi Kurdistan under the protection of 30 bodyguards and using amateur actors, “Turtles Can Fly” paints a different picture of Iraq than the one most Western audiences have seen on TV.

“[U.S. President George W.] Bush and Saddam had become the superstars on the satellite channels. I showed the opposite of this. The superstars in my film were people and children, and Saddam and Bush were in the background,” he said.

As with his acclaimed debut feature, “A Time for Drunken Horses,” it is Ghobadi’s ability to draw remarkable performances from young, untrained actors that has impressed festival jurors and touched audiences.

He spent months combing northern Iraq to find children to play the parts of 13-year-old Satellite, named for his ability to rig up reception for TV channels bringing news of the war; an armless boy who disarms land mines with his teeth; and his mysterious and haunted sister.

“If you want the audience to believe your movie, you must bring elements of reality, such as real locations and real stories. If it’s not real, then the amateur actors who play in my films won’t be able to perform well. They act well because it’s their own story and because they have experienced it,” he said.

Enthused by making “Turtles Can Fly,” which opens in London on Jan. 7, Ghobadi plans another film in Iraq and says the long-dormant Iraqi film industry has begun to stir.

“Film projects have started. Movie theaters which had been closed for almost 30 years are now being reopened,” he said, while cautioning that the process will take time. “It has only been in the last decade that Iranian films are going to the international market. No one should expect today’s Iraqi cinema to achieve this with its first productions.”

Ghobadi, an Iranian Kurd, is lending his backing, helping to set up a filmmaking institute in northern Iraq.