The Need For Each Other Transcends Politics, Resentment in Absorbing ‘The Edge of Heaven’

CHICAGO – As we sit here in the U.S. embroiled in the presidential elections and summertime, the rest of the world simmers within its own unique problems. What about Germany and Turkey? Director and writer Fatih Akin answers this question in the film “The Edge of Heaven” through several distinct characters who symbolize relations between the countries.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Ali is a Turkish retiree living in Germany. Bored out of his mind, he takes up with a prostitute named Yeter and invites her to be his live-in girlfriend. His son, Nejat (a university professor) is touched by Yeter’s devotion to a daughter back in Turkey.

Read Patrick McDonald’s full review of “The Edge of Heaven” in our reviews section. View our full, high-resolution “The Edge of Heaven” image gallery.

A tragedy occurs when Ali suffers a health setback and takes out his frustrations on the hapless Yeter.

Yeter’s daughter, Ayten, is aimlessly perplexed when she stops hearing from her mother. She has gotten in hot water in her homeland as part of a radical political group and is exiled to Germany to hide and search for her mother.

It is there where she meets Lotte: a female graduate student who falls deeply in love with her. When immigration catches up to Ayten, she’s deported and is put in prison back in Istanbul, Turkey. Defying her mother, Lotte follows Ayten there in hopes of obtaining freedom for her.

Nurgül Yesilçay and Patrycia Ziolkowska in “The Edge of Heaven”. Photo credit: Strand Releasing

“The Edge of Heaven” director Fatih Akin. Photo credit: Strand Releasing

Read Patrick McDonald’s full “The Edge of Heaven” review.

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