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After making its worldwide debut at Cannes Film Festival in France, the film was shown at several international film festivals. Its nationwide start in German movie theaters is on September 27, 2007.
Synopsis
The Edge of Heaven plays in Turkey and Germany. The figures travel between these countries, and travel so through their own life. Akın tells the story in calm pictures, unagitated and slow-paced. All face with the death in a different way that acts as an emotional key. The initially uncommunicative people start to unclose themselves.
Plot
Retired widower Ali, a Turkish immigrant living in the German city of
Bremen, believes to have found a solution to his loneliness as he meets
Turkey-born prostitute Yeter. He offers her a monthly payment to move
in. His son Nejat, a professor of German literature, disapproves of
Ali's choice of Yeter as a live-in girlfriend. However, he grows fond
of her when he discovers that she sends money back home to Turkey for
her daughter's college education. As Nejat begins to care for Yeter,
tension arises between himself and his father. Yeter's sudden death, an
accident caused by a drunken blow from Ali, serves to distance father
and son further from each other emotionally. Ali is imprisoned and
later deported to Turkey where he returns to his home town on the Black
Sea.
Nejat travels to Istanbul to search for Yeter's daughter Ayten and
decides to resettle in Turkey, running the German bookshop in Istanbul.
He is not aware of the fact that political activist Ayten is on the run
from the Turkish police and is currently staying in Germany, hiding as
an illegal immigrant and searching for her mother.
Penniless Ayten becomes friends with Lotte, a student who invites
rebellious Ayten to stay in her home, a gesture which is not
particularly welcome by her conservative mother Susanne. Ayten gets
arrested and her asylum plea is denied several months later. Following
her deportation she is imprisoned in Turkey.
Lotte travels to Turkey to free Ayten but quickly realises how little
hope there is. She gets to know Nejat by chance and rents a room in his
home to save expensive hotel costs. A tragic incident in which Lotte
dies makes Susanne decide to go to Istanbul in order to accomplish the
mission her daughter had begun.
Following emotional moments with Susanne, Nejat starts a journey to search for his father, who is living in a Black Sea town.
Cast
- Tuncel Kurtiz as Ali Aksu, Turkish immigrant
- Baki Davrak as Nejat Aksu, son of Ali, German language teacher
- Nursel Köse as Yeter Öztürk, Turkish immigrant prostitute
- Nurgül Yeşilçay as Ayten Öztürk, daughter of Yeter, Turkish student
- Patrycia Ziolkowska as Lotte Staub, student
- Hanna Schygulla as Susanne Staub, mother of Lotta
Awards
- Following the Best Screenplay Award received at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, the film won the Lino Brocka Award in the International Cinema category at the 2007 Cinemanila International Film Festival in the Philippines.
- On October 24, 2007, the European Parliament awarded its newly established LUX prize for European cinema to Fatih Akın's film.
- On November 10, 2007, the film won the Critics Award at the European Cinema Festival, in Seville