June’s film night at the Pierian Centre takes us to Iraq on the eve of the invasion that toppled Saddam. Turtles Can Fly is a powerfully moving film set among Kurdish refugees, waiting anxiously for news of the tyrant’s fall. Our screening is on Sunday 27th June – and is introduced by Houri Ghamian, a Kurdish artist from the same town as the film’s director.
Turtles Can Flywon awards at festivals around the world, from Berlin to Chicago – with critics hailing it as “exquisite” (Washington Post) and “incredibly poignant” (San Francisco Chronicle). Children are the stars of Bahman Ghobadi's film – orphans and young refugees surviving on their wits in a world of landmines and burnt-out tanks. 13-year old Soran supplies and fits satellite dishes to the villagers hungry for news – but his monopoly is threatened by the arrival of a boy who seems able to tell the future. The boy’s sister is the hauntingly beautiful Agrin, who stirs Soran to unrequited love – but whose tragic history means she cannot respond to him.
Bahman Ghobadi wrote the screenplay after living among villagers in this war-torn region – and his film dramatizes the distance between the real world of refugee camps and the god-like arena of Western intervention – distant bringers of hope, invasion and destruction. The Guardian wrote: “There can hardly be any film-maker with a more urgent, and a more desolate sense of the contemporary…. Ghobadi has written a spiritual bulletin from the war-ravaged Middle East…. a journalist's feel for what is relevant combined with a distinctively spiritual capacity for calm. It is a fiercely sombre story, compellingly sited in the here and now.”
Our screening is introduced by Kurdish poet and photographer Houri Ghamian – now based in Bristol, but whose roots take her back to the same quarter of the same city as Ghobadi’s. Houri’s work was recently seen at the Celebrating Sanctuary exhibition here in Bristol. Turtles Can Fly is shown at the Pierian Centre, 27 Portland Square, St Pauls, Bristol BS2 8SA. Tickets are £5 (concessions available) – and should be booked on 0117 924 4512 or info@pieriancentre.com. The Bar opens at 7pm and the screening starts at 7.30pm.
