- IFC Films has acquired U.S. rights to Bahman Ghobadi’s Iraq War drama Turtles Can Fly; Against All Odds composer Michel Colombier has died; Antarctica is getting its first movie house; Academy Award winner Patty Duke has undergone heart bypass surgery.
IFC Films acquires U.S. rights to Bahman Ghobadi’s award-winning Iraq War-themed drama Turtles Can Fly
IFC Films has acquired U.S. rights in all media to Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi’s Iraq invasion drama Turtles Can Fly, winner of the Golden Shell at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival and reportedly one of the hottest-selling titles at this year’s American Film Market.
Additionally, the French-Iranian-Iraqi co-production has been submitted as the Iranian entry for the 2005 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
Set in a refugee camp near the border between Turkey and Iraq’s Kurdistan at the time of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in spring 2003, Turtles Can Fly revolves around a group of children – including an expert at installing satellite dishes – as camp denizens wait to hear the latest news about the war and Saddam Hussein’s inevitable fall.
Like several Italian neorealist classics directed by Vittorio De Sica (e.g., Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves) and Roberto Rossellini (Paisan, Germany Year Zero), Turtles Can Fly features a cast of nonprofessionals, including four war-scarred children.
In other film acquisition news, New Line Cinema has bought the movie rights to Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. Oscar-winning screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Pianist, 2002) has been tapped to adapt the classic novel for the screen.
Against All Odds composer Michel Colombier has died
Hollywood-based French composer Michel Colombier (born on May 23, 1939, in Lyon), who scored more than 100 motion pictures and television productions, died at age 65 on Nov. 14 in Santa Monica, Los Angeles County.
Among the movies featuring Colombier’s music are Jean-Pierre Melville’s Un Flic / Dirty Money, Jacques Demy’s A Room in Town / Une Chambre en ville, Albert Magnoli’s Purple Rain, and Taylor Hackford’s Against All Odds and White Nights.
Antarctica to get its first movie theater
As per the Russian publication Pravda, Argentina will be inaugurating Antarctica’s first movie theater.
The Argentine Cinema Institute and the country’s Foreign Ministry have signed a cooperation agreement to build a 50-seat movie house on the 25 de Mayo Island. The complex will be located in the vicinity of scientific bases from Argentina, Chile, South Korea, Poland, Russia, China, Uruguay, and Brazil.
Showings will be restricted to Argentinian films, which have enjoyed a resurgence in the last few years. The Spanish-language movies will have English subtitles.
Oscar winner Patty Duke undergoes heart bypass surgery
Academy Award winner Patty Duke underwent heart bypass surgery on Nov. 3.
The 57-year-old took home the 1962 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Helen Keller, opposite Best Actress winner Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan, in Arthur Penn’s The Miracle Worker. Both Duke and Bancroft had previously costarred in the stage version of the story, also directed by Penn.
“Award-Winning Iraq War Drama Gets U.S. Distribution” notes
IFC Films website.
Turtles Can Fly image: Mij Film Co. | Bac Films | IFC Films.
“Award-Winning Iraq War Drama Gets U.S. Distribution” last modified in March 2026.