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In his film The Edge of Heaven (2007), under original title Auf der anderen Seite (On the Other Side), Fatih Akin, a German writer-director of Turkish parentage, intertwines two stories, whose protagonists get caught in seemingly hopeless situations, both resulting in individual tragedies, stories with a cross section on the character of a young Turkish German professor, Nejat Aksu (Baki Davrak) whom we first meet living in Bremen and lecturing in the German literature university classes, who returns to Turkey, on a (futile?) quest for the lost daughter of his father's suddenly deceased girlfriend, and (unexpectedly?) stays there where he, quite appropriately to his vocation and interests, buys and maintains an Istanbul bookstore with exclusively German books (or books translated in to German) on offer, two stories which gradually approximate each other, but never actually "resolve" one in to another. Still, the end is open, with the possibility for resolution, future cleansing what-so-ever, of the souls heavily burdened with guilt from the past.

Film touches real life situations, ranging from usual family tensions and quarrels, through losses suffered due to physical separation or emotional disorder, all the way to ultimate loss, death of the dear one, and in doing so engages audiences on the first-person level, because nobody is spared from at least a single such experience, or two or more. Such an easy and deep identification with on-screen happenings, with how they develop, how they are mended or not... is what we feel all along, and what we carry out of the theatre when the film is over... Split between two sides, Life and Death on the edge, but who's to tell which side is the Heaven and which one is the Hell?

Heavy matters tackled, yet easy to relate to, feel for affected characters and empathize with them, in an emotionally charged and very engaging film.

Faith Akin, renowned for his energetic movie 'Gegen die Wand', brings another story about the Turkish-German community. The movie focuses on three families who are all connected in some way. In a beautiful way Akin shows the struggle of a Turkish prostitute, a professor of German literature, a young Turkish rebel, a student English and Spanish and a retired widower to find peace and happiness in their lives. Akin manages to avoid the many pitfalls which can lead to clichés. The characters remain just ordinary people with genuine emotions and problems. The movie also depicts the impact of globalization and multiculturalism in nowadays Germany and Turkey. It's the most debated topic of our time. To what extent do we want newcomers to adapt to their new surroundings and to what extent do we accept them to cherish their own cultural heritage. In an even broader perspective, it deals with the clash between the Islamic and western world. 'Auf der anderen Seite', which means on the other side, shows how Turkish immigrants come to love their new country, Germany, without losing their Turkish roots. I think Akin invites us to try and imagine the backgrounds of people, so there will be less misunderstanding. This view is symbolized by Lotte, a German student, who decides to help Ayten, a Turkish political activist who fled Turkey. She doesn't know the Turkish girl but just wants to help her, because the girl has nowhere to go. This quest even brings her to the shores of Istanbul, a city where East meets West in the most literal way.

In the end, 'Auf der anderen Seite' is a story of love and hope which is most endearing and sheds a refreshing light on the global trend of clashing cultures. Any one who is interested in these topics and just loves a very well made movie, ought see this German-Turkish production!

"Auf der anderen Seite" is the first Faith Akin-movie I have seen, and I was surprised by how balanced and mature it was. Looking at Akin's young age and the "gang"-background of his youth, I was expecting something much louder, more brutal, more explicit, more devastating. What "Auf der anderen Seite" is, is a deeply humanistic and thoughtful movie.

The thing that I loved most about it, is that every single character is written so well. No one is a villain or a bad person per se, they're all just human, struggling to do what they think is right. The actors and actresses portraying these characters are fabulous. I've rarely seen such convincing and natural performances.

Finally, the story itself is original, unagitated and beautiful. The individual plot lines don't come together as you think they would or as you think it might be best for the characters. When the movie ends, you will find that everything did resolve in a way. It's hard to explain it, if you haven't seen it. Let's just say this: "Auf der anderen Seite" doesn't have the average Hollywood-solution, but it will leave you with a lot to think about when the credits quietly start running.

This movie really impressed me, and I can't wait to finally see Akin's other works. Apparently Germany's finally got a really interesting filmmaker deserving of all the praise he gets.

"The Edge of Heaven", original title "On the other side", takes up a number of ideas from Faith Akin's previous film. But it takes them also in a new unexpected direction - with a political view (on Kurdish problem, on Europeans), with additional protagonist types - now the conflicted German Turks are joined by 'naive' Germans proper and 'seen-too-much' Turkish (Kurds) proper. All of the characters were very well constructed and, as representative types of their social groups, offered much material for the audience to reflect upon.

Indeed, a knowledgeable audience would find this film to be replete with commentary on our social and political reality, the Anatolian and the European, and on the respective preconceptions and stereotypes. Some of the commentary is tragic, some is ironic. Here, in Bulgaria, the audience laughed and applauded when the German granma said with all her conviction to the Kurdish girl that everything in her country will become alright once they join the EU. On the other hand, an émigré Kurdish audience will probably applaud a very moving and full of suspense depiction of the Kurdish struggle in Turkey, which is however frank both to Kurds and to the Turkish authorities. It included small cameos from the conflict that are for the first time openly publicised: for example, the revolutionaries as they are taken out of their hideout to be arrested by the police, announce their names to the street and the world, in apprehension of being disappeared by the authorities; minutes later the crowd of passer-bys claps to the departing police vans in a popular approval of the suppression of kurdish struggle...

Still, the myriad political and social themes are only a setting to a much more personal story. The opening of one's soul, the crossing of inner walls that separate us from those who love us. This story is repeated three times, in different context, for the three characters who remain alive to cross 'to the other side': the German mother who accepts her daughter's ideals, the German-Turkish son who forgives his father, the Kurdish girl who takes the love of her friends over her revolutionary commitment. However, the director allows no one of them to consume their redemption within the film's running time - their characters remain tragic.

It is a very powerful film. As a friend said after the screening, it tramples over you like a steam-roller. The emotional mix of the previous film "Head-on" had me cry, but crying releases the pain. This one doesn't let to release the tension even at the final scene. It will stay with you for days after.

I usually comment on films right after I've seen them. However, "Auf der anderen Seite" (The Edge of Heaven), touched me in a way that few films do, so a month has passed.

This story of two sets of mothers and daughters, a father and his son...and a gun seems familiar, but its resolution is anything but. To lay out the plot would be daunting. So much ground is covered, yet it unfolds effortlessly. F a t i h Akin's screenplay is elliptical--the story starts where it finishes--but by the end, when the opening scene is replayed, our journey with these characters puts us, indeed, on the edge of transcendence.

Amid the desperation on display, small details brim over the images: a son waters his father's tomato plants pausing to taste the ripened fruit, a mother pits cherries that stain her fingers, another manicures her nails to avoid a quarrel, we imagine a bookstore's--specifically a German language bookstore in Istanbul--smell and the safety it can bring to a foreigner.... These domestic details are set against much larger, although finally insignificant, struggles: the cultural divide of immigrants, students revolting against an oppressive government, how imprisonment can deaden the soul. But F a t i h Akin wants the basic struggles of family bonds to be central here. It's the resolution of family rifts--small and large, emotional and physical--that are urgent.

The choice of settings, music, lighting... all carefully selected to build toward one moment that catches us off guard. When a foreigner asks "What is Kurban Bayrami?" (a Turkish holiday) the many seemingly disparate elements that we've been watching--in good faith because they're so rivetingly told--suddenly come together, it almost knocked the breath out of me.

Whether or not we as viewers have lost a father or mother or a child, through death, physical separation or emotional turmoil, we can understand what these characters suffer. And how all that can be healed—the willingness to have faith that good intentions can mend this troubled world—is something like a miracle to find illustrated on film. The weapons these characters lay down to pursue goodness don't necessarily have the effect they intend, but as we watch lives torn apart and then healed we see what they don't. And we carry that lesson out of theater with us.

I don't really want to be polemic right now, because this movie invaded me with such a elevated state of spirit and emotions that I just want to say good things. But I cannot help myself and assert openly that this film was much more compelling, emotionally charging, smart, vast, wide and deep , than the winner at the Cannes Film Festival, 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days. Faith Akin, whom first much lauded feature Gegen Die Wand I didn't like at all(i found it intoxicatingly loud, shaky and in a way polluted) has just hit the jackpot with this gem of a movie. Of course not the jackpot for money but for artistic value. Just go and see this movie, it's gonna be worth every second you spend in front of the screen. It will make you cry (and laugh sometimes), but it will elevate your state of mind and melt the tension within yourself.

... missed opportunities, coincidences, ships that pass in the night and accidents. Just like life - a story full of 'if only' and 'what could have been'.

Imaginative and original Turkish German fare.

Auf der anderen Seite (2007), written and directed by Faith Akin, was shown in the U.S. with the title "The Edge of Heaven." This is a powerful and moving drama that interweaves the stories of six people--a father and son, and two mother-daughter pairs. The father and son are from Turkey, but live in Germany. At the outset of the movie, one of the mother- daughter pairs is separated, with the mother in Germany and the daughter in Turkey. The other mother-daughter pair are Germans living in Germany. By the end of the movie, for various reasons, each of the six has traveled from one country to the other.

Faith Akin, himself a German of Turkish heritage, obviously understands and is comfortable in both worlds. Some of the characters in the film make the transition from one culture to the other seamlessly, but some suffer from extreme culture shock, and all of them are changed.

The acting is uniformly excellent. I particularly admired Nurgül Yesilçay as a Turkish student and radical, and Patrycia Ziolkowska as the young German woman who befriends her. Fassbinder's muse, the incomparable Hanna Schygulla, has possibly the most difficult role of the six, and, as always, she is outstanding.

We saw that film at the Rochester High Falls International Film Festival, but it will work well on a small screen. This is an extraordinary film, and it's definitely worth finding and viewing.

I had the unique chance of watching one of the best movies of my life - being a huge movie buff myself - today before the official screening of the movie in Toronto. The story of several people in Turkey and Germany and how fate and circumstances connect them and liberate them from their sins, mistakes and guilts. The performances, the phenomenal script, juxtaposition of scenes, direction, locations... everything is sooooo beautifully rendered and executed that leave the viewer with nothing but endless admiration for anyone involved, particularly Faith Akin, whose story-telling and direction deserved a Palme D'or and a Best Foreign Language film Oscar. He won the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes 2007 though and deservedly so. The finale easily found its way among my most favorites...

Another Strong Point: The character of father which is faultlessly written and performed!

Was this going to be a keeper or be binned?

Its all symmetrically constructed and contrived. A thick interwoven political seam is tying the film tidily too together. Narrative is jigsawed into precisely fitted – i.e engineered – plot pieces. Turkey bits slot into Germany bits and Germany bits get stuffed neatly into the Turkey bits (Lol)

When a story gets to be too structured by coincidence it feels artificial. Life – authentic vitally lived life, in the raw, in the real – isn't scripted into tight predetermined plots.

Seeing this confirmed a prejudice: the Turkish male attitude towards women (ok, thighbooted Turkish whores) is "I own you" = I'll slap you. Or we'll throw The Koran at you. Typically patriarchal and unsurprisingly chauvinistic. Therefore let Turkish women radicalise themselves, be running amok with guns. And love only women.

(male Turkish Professors reading German are excepted, as they've liberated themselves via Goethe )

The Turkish/Germany divide is suitably, equally, uniformly, intertwined. Commendable it is. Which is another way of saying worthy. But dull. Ken Loach would be proud.

It's in the bin.

many of us who watched or are thinking about watching Faith Akin's latest film are most probably turning to it after being impressed by his more than amazing Head-On which i personally love! To avoid disappointment, besides the tag line which seems pretty similar these two movies are not very much alike. The best would be to take 'TEOH' as what it is and not as "Head-On the sequel".

the movie tells us the story of a young Turkish professor who lives and most probably grew up in Germany, and now decides to set on a journey back to his hometown to find the daughter of his father's new girlfriend. as it turns out finding someone in a foreign country is not that easy, and as such there are many emotions and surprises involved.

what especially stands out are the cinematography which presents a beautiful and colorful Turkey and the direction which is nothing less than superb! although there are no big names in the cast, as a whole it performed a great job, especially by Nurgul Yesilcay who portrayed the looked for daughter and Hanna Schygulla who portrayed the mother of this daughter's lover.

for me, just as it was a great movie it could have been a great book, especially because of the ending that no matter how hard i tried just didn't let me get this movie out of my head. in an interview i've seen of the newly internationally acclaimed and appreciated director he mentions Emir Kustorica and also confesses how after making Head-On he thought he knew one or two things about cinema and how now after making The Edge Of Heaven he knows that nor he nor many others have any idea what cinema really is. He ends by quoting Mr. Kustorica after watching TEOH saying "this my friend, this is cinema."

highly recommended to anyone who...to everyone!

After seeing his film Duvara Karsi (Gegen die Wand), I made a personal decide : I must see all his films before I die. Now, I believe that my last experience with "Auf Der anderen Seite" proved that I'm right with my decision. What I like to see in his films is hearing and seeing the love from different angle. Sadness is a way to understand the value of the love and he is showing us that in his own style. Even I stay against some of the characters, in my personal opinion, he tries to tell us that when you match with life and being wanted, being needed, all other constitutions and formations are nothing! He also uses and mentions Turkiye's crossing to a new looking and new thinking. His bridge between two cultures is so strong and this story could not be filmed by any other director. Excellent work and a must see.

Forgiveness, redemption, repentance, and connection form interweaving themes of Faith Akin's complex and multi-layered film The Edge of Heaven. Titled On the Other Side in German, the film is primarily character-driven but is shaped by political, cultural, and family conflict that illuminate the struggle between first and second-generation Turks and Germans and their loneliness in exile. Akin builds his narrative on elaborate coincidences, yet his characters are drawn with such nuance that we willingly go where he takes us without questioning. Though The Edge of Heaven is a realistic drama, shifts in the timeline and dreamlike visions introduce surreal touches that serve to enhance its intensity.

Moving between Germany and Turkey, The Edge of Heaven is divided into three sections, two revealing a crucial plot point in its inter-title. In the first section, Nejat (Baki Davrak), a second-generation Turk, is a university professor in Hamburg, Germany. He is close to his father Ali (Tuncel Turkiz), a lonely widower who is a frequent visitor to the red-light districts of Hamburg. When he falls for Yeter (Nursel Kose), a Turkish prostitute, he asks her to move in with him and have sex whenever he wants. When Yeter is intimidated by two Turkish fundamentalists on the bus because of her profession, she decides to accept his offer. Nejat also takes a liking to her and comforts her when she cries over her estrangement from her 27-year-old daughter Ayten (Nurgul Yesilcay) whom she has lost contact with in Istanbul.

After a tragic accident in his home, Nejat travels to Istanbul to try and locate Ayten to help her in her education, purchasing a small bookstore while giving up his teaching job in Hamburg. What he doesn't know is that Ayten, a militant political activist, has fled Turkey and returned to Germany to find her mother and seek asylum. In Part Two, Ayten meets Lotte (Patrycia Zlolkowska), a German student without clear direction in her life. To the consternation of Lotte's more conservative mother Susanne, brilliantly performed by former Fassbinder star Hanna Schygulla, they move in together, forming a passionate sexual relationship. Letting down her guard when stopped by police for a routine traffic inspection, Ayten is arrested and sent back to Turkey after her request for asylum is denied on the grounds that since Turkey has applied for admission to the European Union it could not be a threat to her safety.

When Lotte soon follows her to Istanbul, another shocking incident is precipitated and the final chapter follows the characters as they deal with personal tragedy and seek reconciliation. In The Edge of Heaven, the 34-year-old Akin has vaulted into the elite group of international directors whose films have a universal appeal. It is not only that he is willing to confront serious issues but that his characters are three-dimensional human beings who we believe in and care about regardless of their politics. The Edge of Heaven will have you applauding not only for an emotional power reminiscent of Kieslowski, but for its message of forgiveness and empathy, offered without pandering or sentimentality.

"The Edge of Heaven" is simply put a masterpiece. It's been a while since I've seen such brilliant artistic vision and flawless execution. Turkey and Germany are two parallel worlds of this movie's characters. People and coffins travel from one place to another, never-ending pain and joy intertwined. The director Faith Akin, German of Turkish descent perfectly understands both worlds.He inhabits the souls of his characters and draws some of the most memorable performances from his cast of marvelous actors. I have to point out mesmerizing Hanna Schygulla, the muse of late Reiner Fasbinder, in an absolute perfection of a performance. The scenes of her characters grief are some of the most gut wrenching moments of naked pain I've ever seen in a movie. I feel grateful to Mr. Akin for this rich slice of humanity that captures accurately all the things that make are both different and alike in the same time. Nations and religions are only the crust. Underneath are the soft and vulnerable beings full of love and fear.

The Edge of Heaven

This is such a powerful, expansive, yet intimate movie about one of the things that matters most in our times, it's hard to fault it. The acting, the events, the setting, and implications of all these characters meeting and not quite meeting, suck you in. If it seems to have a lull now and then, you end up feeling the pace of their lives, and the pace of life itself. The events, even when they have a comic twist, are so heady and difficult they could make whole films each by themselves, but here they work through several related sections within a single tapestry.

As strong as the acting is, the core of the movie is the series of events, the plot. You'll see early on some coincidences beyond reason, making the plot almost Shakespearean, and therefore artful. The roles are each character are just a little surprising, just enough to keep us curious, yet each character represents a distinctive aspect of the crosscurrents of German and Turkish cultures and worlds, such as old people assimilating and young people refusing to assimilate. Even more than the mixing of Mexican and American worlds here in the U.S., this is a dramatic and more contentious melding, fraught with all those dangers of misunderstanding we hear in the news every day. Yet when it's brought down to the level of individuals, even seemingly unyielding ones, humanity wins.

I don't know how this film will carry itself in a couple decades. As well made as it is, it feels rooted in the moment, and when the times change yet again, there might be some kind of art or magic or transcendence missing to make it fully transport a viewer. It will remain interesting, but possibly less moving. But then, maybe the themes, of parents and children, of friends looking for who they miss and avoiding who they can't stand any more, might just be universal. But as a reflection of our world right now, 2009 (or 2007, when the movie was finished), it helped clarify just what life is like out there, beyond cinematic glitter and glam, beyond hyped up violence and romance. And beyond even the limitations of documentary in creating aura.

The Edge of Heaven happens to end with such lyrical highs, the name of the movie hits you hard. We are reminded of what exists beyond all the trappings that made so many people in the previous two hours so miserable, and it's there for us to tap into and to have in common, regardless.