2007 ‘Auf der anderen Seite’ Directed by Fatih Akın
The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together.
Baki Davrak Nurgül Yeşilçay Tuncel Kurtiz Nursel Köse Patrycia Ziolkowska Hanna Schygulla Yelda Reynaud Lars Rudolph İdil Üner Erkan Can Turgay Tanülkü Gökhan Kıraç Nejat İşler Gürsoy Gemec Cengiz Daner Elcim Eroglu Nurten Güner Asuman Altinay Ali Akdeniz Nadire Irtel Sevilay Demirci Öznur Kula Gokce Isil Tuna Sileyman Kaplan Stefanie Piehl Andreas Westphal Jörg Jänicke Annette Uhlen Andreas Thiel Show All…
Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien Anka Film Dorje Film FFA FilmFörderung Hamburg nordmedia NDR Kulturelle Filmförderung Schleswig-Holstein
Al otro lado, На краю рая, Do Outro Lado, 天堂的另一边, 天堂邊緣, Yaşamın Kıyısında, 천국의 가장자리
PTAbro's World Tour Stop 14: Turkey
An ouroboric tale of twisting relationships, shared acquaintances, and converging plotlines, The Edge of Heaven is a spectacularly involving film highlighting the juxtaposition of an increasingly globalized society with decreasingly connected families. It's a macro/micro study of human relationships, and full of great performances. From Turkey to Germany and back, director Fatih Akin manages to craft an emotional tale of alienation, both political and familial, and delights in the convoluted interweaving of the three families involved.
Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, lovers and strangers; all make The Edge of Heaven an almost Altman-esque exercise in connections, large and small, between all the main players. It's almost reminiscent of a heist tale in the…
One of my soft spots in cinema are those films that have a magnified universality of axiomatic human values that transcend international borders, which are political, geographical, economical and/or ideological subjective divisions made up by men. Renoir first approached this topic in 1937 and addressed it with irresistibly moving humanist arguments, becoming one of the best films ever made.
The episodically shattered treatment reminded me of one of the many intentions of Iñárritu in Babel (2006) and his famous tradition of making interconnected stories, but the completely engrossing violent environment with its transnational treatment of cause and consequence brought Villeneuve’s Incendies (2010) to my mind immediately. I reiterate that these films are one of my (several) soft spots in cinema…
64/100
[Originally published on Nerve.com]
Like his previous dramatic feature, the Berlin prizewinner Head-On, Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven explores the increasingly porous borders between East and West, shuttling characters back and forth between Hamburg and Istanbul and observing their rootless confusion. Akin divides the film into three chapters, two of which sport titles that announce the impending death of a major character—a structural device that lends even ostensibly mundane scenes a certain uneasy tension. Part One focuses on a cantankerous Turkish émigré (Tuncel Kurtiz) and the hooker (also Turkish) he hires to be his live-in girlfriend (Nursel Köse), to the consternation of his bookish son (Baki Davrak); Part Two follows the hooker's daughter (Nurgül Yesilçay), a student radical…
"Darling," replied Valentine, "has not the count just told us that all human wisdom is summed up in two words? - 'Wait and hope.'" --The Count of Monte Cristo
The director, Fatih Akin, took inspiration from this closing line, so I will run with it and see where it leads…
Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with an older gentleman, who was telling me about his small business. I listened as he meandered through his history and what he learned through the years and then he said something that is perhaps the most profound thing I’ve heard in a long time. He said, “Most people think that they have two choices, to either do something, or to…
The Edge of Heaven is a deep, multi-layered film. It's a bit too neat and intertwined, but there is so much true substance and emotion it's all worth it. What stands out most to me is the connection the viewer develops with so many different characters. At just about 2 hours long, it feels longer but moves quickly.
I won't speak about the plot, as it doesn't add to any critique and could contain spoilers. The film is about various people living in Turkey and Germany, Turks in Germany, Germans in Turkey, etc etc, and how their lives become connected. Films like this can often feel gimmicky and I usually avoid them, but it's handled delicately here. Nor does the…
allahın almanyasındaki karadenizlinin kelebek etkisine bak nefretim fitillendi
9.5 /10
I'm a sucker for a seemingly complex yet profound story, involving intertwining characters & weaving relationships, told both simply & elegantly.
Wonderful music, excellent acting, & a distinct nod to multiculturalism - yet it was seeing Hanna Schygulla effortlessly showing why she was such a Fassbinder Favorite which was gasp-inducing.
