Release Date: May 21 (limited)
Director/Writer: Fatih Akin
Cinematographer: Rainer Klausmann
Starring: Baki Davrak, Nursel Köse, Hanna Schygulla, Tunçel Kurtiz, Nurgül Yesilçay, Patrycia Ziolkowska
Studio/Run Time: Strand Releasing, 116 mins.
A nuanced and sobering study of exile, escape and familial responsibility
In The Edge of Heaven, Fatih Akin draws from his own experiences as a German born to Turkish parents. Ali, a widower living in a Turkish enclave in Germany, pays a Turkish prostitute named Yeter to live with him. When Ali accidentally kills her, his estranged son, Nejat, a professor of German literature, goes to Istanbul to search for Yeter’s daughter, Ayten, whose radical politics have necessitated an escape to Germany. Ayten falls in with Lotte, a young German who wants to help her return to Turkey unscathed. As the characters search for themselves by searching for each other, their desperate orbits never quite synch up, causing ruptures and tragedies. The exile mentality is one of constant flight, and Akin poignantly surveys its fallout with a pair of arresting images: One coffin boards a plane heading from Germany to Turkey; another boards a plane heading the opposite way. While the film ends on a hopeful note, the characters never quite manage to cross the edge of heaven. Instead, they endlessly tread its rim.