Shot a mere month after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Bahman Ghobadi's Iraqi war drama Turtles Can Fly (photo) won the Golden Shell at the 2004 San Sebastián Film Festival. According to Reuters, Peruvian author and chairman of the jury Mario Vargas Llosa stated that although the decision was not unanimous, Turtles Can Fly had "moved us all, not only because of the terrible conditions in which it was filmed, but also because … despite the tragedy which it recounts, it is filled with humanity, poetry and even humor."
Bahman Ghobadi's Iraq War movie Turtles Can Fly
Set in Iraq's Kurdistan right before the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of that country, Turtles Can Fly tells the story of several villagers who struggle to set up a satellite dish as they await the beginning of the war. Among the picture's amateur cast are four war-scarred children, one of which is armless and another blind. (The blind kid has since undergone an operation and reportedly is now able to see.)
"I filmed my third feature film after a journey to Iraq," the Kurdish-Iranian Ghobadi was quoted as saying in the El Mundo website, "with the people and sites I found there. My script consisted of three pages of key words: 'refugee camp', 'misery', 'war', 'abuse.'"
Among the other San Sebastián winners was Ulrich Thomsen (photo), chosen as Best Actor for his work in the Danish drama Brothers, a military story set in Afghanistan; Connie Nielsen, who plays a soldier's wife in the same film, won as Best Actress.
China's Xu Jinglei was given the Best Director award for Letter from an Unknown Woman, an adaptation of Stefan Zweig's novel about a man who learns he is the father of a child whose mother — with whom he'd had a brief fling — he can't remember. Jinglei also co-produced and stars in the film. (In 1948, Max Ophüls filmed the story in Hollywood with Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan; Margaret Sullavan had starred in an updated version in 1933. A 2001 Franco-German made-for-TV version stars Irène Jacob and Christopher Thompson.)
The San Sebastián jury's Special Award went to Serbia & Montenegro's Goran Paskaljevic for A Winter Night's Dream, a tale of Bosnian war refugees who have taken over the vacant apartment of a Serb. Problems ensue when the Serbian returns home to resume his life after a ten-year absence.