Turtles Can Fly
Turtles Can Fly
Near the Iraqi-Turkish border on the eve of an American invasion, refugee children, like 13-year-old Kak (Ebrahim), gauge and await their fate.
CrossCutCritic reviewedMay 10, 2025
Turtles Can Fly
To the World That Sent the Children into the Minefields
“Your children lie at the head of every street like antelope caught in a net; they are filled with the wrath of the Lord, the rebuke of your God.”
— Isaiah 51:20
I. They Were Not Meant to Lead
They are children.
But they run the camps.
Set the antennas.
Dig out the landmines.
No one chose them.
No one trained them.
The adults were either gone, broken, or looking the other way.
And so the children ruled—
with walkie-talkies, missing limbs,
and eyes that have seen too much to ever sleep well again.
In Turtles Can Fly, the apocalypse has already happened.
It isn’t on its way.
It’s everywhere.
A Kurdish refugee camp waits on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The adults are shadows.
The hope is plastic.
The survivors are 12.
Satellite is their leader.
Bossy, resourceful, funny.
He tries to hold it all together.
But this is not leadership.
This is child martyrdom disguised as organization.
He translates news no one asked him to understand.
He organizes weapons he barely knows how to fear.
He keeps smiling—until he doesn’t.
If you’ve ever watched a child carry burdens meant for soldiers,
if you’ve seen a soul too young trying to protect everyone else—
then you know this kind of ruin.
It is not dramatic.
It is logistical.
And the world watched.
---
Here is Section II of Turtles Can Fly:
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II. The Girl Who Carried Death in Her Arms
Her name is Agrin.
She says almost nothing.
Her eyes hold the weight of everything.
She is not tragic.
She is already past that.
Tragedy still expects something to be saved.
Agrin has already crossed that line.
She moves like someone floating just above the earth—
not ghost,
not angel,
but the space between.
She carries a baby.
We learn it’s the child of rape.
Born of a soldier.
Raised in silence.
She does not hate him.
She does not love him.
She just tries not to feel at all.
But there is a moment.
A flicker.
She lowers her guard.
And that is what undoes her.
Because in a world where survival depends on numbness,
feeling is fatal.
When she lets herself be seen—
not desired, but noticed—
the pain rushes in.
And then the unthinkable happens.
She lets go of the child.
Not out of cruelty.
Out of exhaustion.
Out of the unbearable truth
that she cannot carry death and live.
If you’ve ever judged someone for collapsing under a burden you never held—
this girl is your mirror.
And if you’ve ever walked to the edge of yourself
and found nothing left to give—
then Agrin has already been there.
She does not need your pity.
She needs your repentance.
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III. The Prophet With No Arms
His name is Hengov.
He has no arms.
He sees the future.
He is Agrin’s brother—
or what’s left of a brother
after war takes what it needs.
He says almost nothing.
But when he speaks,
it’s in riddles,
or warnings,
or prayers.
He knows when the mines will explode.
He senses who will die.
But no one listens.
They use him to clear the fields—
an armless child sent to outsmart explosives
because he doesn’t cost much to lose.
And still he walks forward.
Hengov is not just a character.
He is a prophet in the oldest sense:
wounded, ignored,
and always right too late.
He sees what’s coming.
But he’s powerless to stop it.
He lives like someone who already knows the ending
and still chooses to stay in the story.
If you’ve ever tried to warn a world
that refused to change—
if you’ve ever carried truth
no one was ready to hear—
you know this child.
He doesn’t cry.
He doesn’t curse.
He just keeps walking,
into fields that still hunger for blood.
And in a world obsessed with power,
his presence
is a rebuke.
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IV. The Camp Where God Did Not Intervene
There are no miracles here.
No rescue.
No final act of divine reversal.
The Americans arrive,
but they come too late,
and with the wrong language.
Agrin is gone.
Hengov is shattered.
Satellite no longer speaks.
The camp keeps living—
but not because hope returned.
Because survival is its own kind of inertia.
This is not a war story.
It is a lamentation.
The kind whispered into cracked walls.
The kind buried with small hands.
The kind the psalmist wrote when God stopped responding.
Satellite, who once orchestrated everything—
now limps.
He stares.
He doesn’t say a word.
He who once translated the world
has no words left to give it.
This is the cruciform shape of Turtles Can Fly:
not because someone died for love,
but because no one came to stop the dying.
If you’ve ever waited for God to show up and found only wind—
if you’ve ever prayed that the children would be spared
and watched instead as they were handed more explosives—
this film doesn’t offer comfort.
It offers witness.
And sometimes,
witness is the only act of faith that remains.
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V. A Passion Without Rescue
There is no Easter morning.
Only a hillside.
A silence.
A child who once knew how to lead
and now doesn’t know how to speak.
This is what it means when we say the world is fallen.
Not abstractly.
But concretely.
In bodies.
In orphans.
In minefields where arms are lost before childhood ends.
Turtles Can Fly doesn’t ask you to feel bad.
It asks you to stop looking away.
It is a Passion story.
But no one rolls back the stone.
No one comes to say, “Do not fear.”
There are only children,
and dirt,
and a God who, if present,
remained behind the curtain.
But maybe the cross still lives here.
Not as redemption.
As recognition.
Because something in us dies when we watch this,
and if it doesn’t—
we weren’t alive to begin with.
This is not a film for comfort.
It is a film for repentance.
A parable for nations.
A warning for those who still believe that history is something we survive
without blood on our hands.
If you’ve ever been told children are resilient—
watch this.
And let them finally rest.
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Postscript
Not every child gets to grow up.
Not every prophet gets believed.
Not every sacrifice gets honored.
But if we are going to speak of the cross,
let us speak of this—
the place where innocence bled,
where systems fed on souls,
and where God’s silence must not be mistaken for approval.
Turtles Can Fly is not about hope.
It is about cost.
And the only way forward
is to carry the memory with us
like a scar we refuse to let heal clean.
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If This Film Broke Something in You, You May Also Find Shelter In:
Children of Heaven – For the ones who gave everything and still came in first when they only needed third.
The Wind Will Carry Us – When God stays behind the door and still expects you to wait.
Late Spring – For silent sacrifices made in the name of love no one could say out loud.
Ordet – A resurrection that takes too long, but still comes.
Winter Light (in progress) – For those who found only silence in the sanctuary.