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Directed by: Fatih Akin (Germany-Turkey, 2007)
Duration: 122 mins
Starring: Nurgül Yesilçay, Baki Davrak, Tuncel Kurtiz, Hanna Schygulla
Dialogues: German, Turkish, English
Subtitles: Greek

In the middle of Akin’s deeply moving drama is the conflict of identity. It’s a universal concern reflected as the bewilderment of Turkish-Germans who find themselves in a quasi-empirical nation, and the guilt of obligation – from one group to its immigrant class, and the other to the old country. The Edge of Heaven (better titled in its original German as On The Other Side) is not an easy film. Akin paints in bleak tones and opens with the chapter title Yeter’s Death, one that quickly establishes a mood of tension and looming dread as several threads pass back and forth between Turkey and Germany.

In Bremen, Turkish Yeter works as a prostitute and befriends an elderly client, Ali. He confuses issues of sex and ownership and is jailed for manslaughter. Meanwhile we learn of Yeter’s estranged daughter and meet Ali’s son, a professor who later moves to Istanbul. Akin complicates matters with tangled timelines and the death of Lotte, a German student who falls in love with Yeter’s daughter Gül who had fled Turkey on political grounds. Authority interrupts their fledgling relationship while fate forces the hand of Lotte’s soon-to-be childless mother.

There’s an air of the spiritual about the near misses and hits in the affairs of Akin’s characters. It lightens the load of hefty philosophical queries he throws up, without undermining the intensity of the story. He does ask for a minor leap of faith – there is an element of happenstance that will not suit all tastes. Yet there’s also an earthy grittiness that keeps events grounded in a reality while quietly, confidently moving to a provocative and hopeful close. Ultimately The Edge of Heaven is a complex, rewarding and compelling tale about the mixed fate of globalised history, and the hope that comes from sacrifice.