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“Akin - already the winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for his 2004 film Head-On - is a director who has found a real voice. He tackles big ideas, big themes, in the service of which he creates believable human beings and elicits tremendous performances from his actors. It is bold and exhilarating film-making.”
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Original Title
Auf der Anderen Seite
Synopsis
After Head-On and Crossing The Bridge: The Sound Of Istanbul (2005), Akin puts his mighty filmmaking talents into what is possiblya the most complex film of his career.that has been hailed as his best yet.
In Germany, retired widower Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) sees a solution to loneliness when he meets prostitute Yeter (Nursel Köse). Ali proposes to the fellow Turkish native to live with him in exchange for a monthly stipend. Ali’s bookish son Nejat (Turkish star Baki Davrak) seems disapproving about his bully father’s choice. But the young German professor quickly grows fond of kind Yeter, especially upon discovering most of her hard-earned money is sent home to Turkey for her daughter’s university studies.
The accidental death of Yeter distances father and son even more, emotionally and physically. Nejat travels to Istanbul to begin an organized search for Yeter’s daughter Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay in a bold and compelling performance). He decides to stay in Turkey and trades places with the owner of a German bookstore who goes home to Germany. What Nejat doesn’t know is that 20-something political activist Ayten is already in Germany, having fled the Turkish police.
Alone and penniless, Ayten is befriended by German student Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), who is immediately seduced by the young Turkish woman’s charms and political situation. Lotte invites rebellious Ayten to stay in her home, a gesture not particularly pleasing to her conservative mother Susanne. Ayten is ends up arrested and confined for months while awaiting political asylum. When her plea is denied, Ayten is deported and imprisoned in Turkey. Passionate Lotte decides to abandon everything to help Ayten.
In Turkey, Lotte gets caught up in the frustrating bureaucracy of the seemingly hopeless situation of freeing trying to free Ayten. A chance bookstore meeting will lead her to becoming Nejat’s roommate. A tragic event will bring Susanne (the legendary Hannah Schygulla in an award-winning performance) to Istanbul to help fulfill her daughter’s mission. Emotional moments spent with Susanne will inspire Nejat to seek out his estranged father, now residing on Turkey’s Black Sea coast.
Fath Akin weaves a complex, magical web of crossed lives and crossed destinies in his award-winning The Edge Of Heaven, when one man’s journey to set right a wrong is only the beginning of a chain of events and consequences that is greater than them all. A moving A bittersweet tale of love and loss, The Edge Of Heaven won the Best Screenplay award at the 2007 Festival de Cannes.
