- Critic Score
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100Superb acting and authentic details energize this rare Iran/Iraq coproduction.
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100This isn't a war movie. Rather, it's a powerful, heart-tugging portrait of the innocent victims of conflict.
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100One of the most heartbreaking, unforgettable dramas in years.
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100It is about the actual lives of refugees, who lack the luxury of opinions because they are preoccupied with staying alive in a world that has no place for them.
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100Ghobadi shows us a world where a village pond can hold both rare goldfish and unforgivable evil, and where every step is onto booby-trapped terrain.
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100It's a soaring achievement, without ever leaving the ground.
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100Turtles Can Fly, is masterly: it courses before us with grace, a control that paradoxically bespeaks love and anger.
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90Although Turtles Can Fly is a lyrical, often lovely film with touches of humor, it's also a remorseless tragedy that doesn't offer its child protagonists any false redemption.
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90Ghobadi's genius seems supercharged rather than weighed down by his higher calling, and his imagery is so boilingly alive that we come away from it feeling exhilarated rather than depressed.
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90It is a heartbreaking film, and cruelty sometimes seems to be not only its subject but its method. Like the child on a high cliff that is one of its recurring images, the film walks up to the edge of hopelessness and pauses there, waiting to see what happens next.
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90Ghobadi in this pic displays a complete command of his art as he shifts between -- and even blends -- wrenching tragedy and amusing comedy.
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90Turtles Can Fly has little space for mawkishness, and the kids are far too cussed to be cute. It is, in every sense, the more immediate achievement: it hits and hurts the eyes (the rainy days are lousy enough, but the skies of royal blue, above such grief, feel especially insulting), and it also seems to bleed straight out of the headlines.
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88A beautiful, intensely moving film.
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88By the end, Turtles Can Fly becomes a lyrical and heartbreaking reminder of the human toll of war.
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88Offers a sometimes lyrical, sometimes gut-turning portrait of war seen through the eyes of children.
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Heart-wrenching as well as spirit-raising.
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80Ghobadi has little use for sentimentality, and never flinches from the fate of these children.
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80Turtles Can Fly creates a haunting reminder that collateral damage can't always be measured in casualty rates, and that it goes on long after the news cameras have left the scene.
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80Amid the muddy scrubbery of the camp and its hinterland surroundings, Ghobadi catches some striking compositions.
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80Ghobadi uses the lack of resources and the surfeit of drama that had been the lot of the Kurds throughout Hussein's dictatorship and both Gulf wars much in the way De Sica and Rossellini used the European tragedies of the '30s and '40s,
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80Powerful images hook you immediately.
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80A cry of anguish for the youngest victims of every war.
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80All of the actors in Turtles Can Fly are nonprofessionals, and all bring electrifying authenticity and presence to their roles.
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There's no denying his (Ghobadi's) talent for suspense or his ability to get riveting performances from nonprofessionals.
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78An emotional triumph.
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75There's no refuge in this uncomfortably realistic movie, and that is its strength.
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75Sad yet offering glimpses of hope.
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75Not everything here is that vivid or uncluttered. Sometimes, the film betrays the circumstances of its making, shot hastily on location in Iraq after the fall of Saddam just as the extended conflict was beginning.
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67A well-made but harrowing and extremely downbeat coming-of-age drama.
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63What keeps the picture alive is Ghobadi's surprising, often explosive grasp of visual farce.
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Lacks grace, coherence, and a surface vivid enough to make it an alarm that many will hear.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 47 out of 49
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Mixed: 0 out of 49
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Negative: 2 out of 49
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