A very cleverly written and edited film that ties in the stories of different people, generations and nationalities, a lonely retired Turkish immigrant in Germany meets a prostitute from his home country which begins an interesting (to say the least) chain of events, I won't ruin it by giving away too much of the script but unintentional death plays a large part as does forgiveness, incredibly the characters don't realise how 'connected' they actually are throughout the film which is divided into three parts, the occasional 'flashback' moment adds rather than detracts from the pacing and the storyline holds your interest at all times, absolutely no filler moments or scenes in this one.

German screenwriter, producer and director F Akin's fifth feature film which he wrote and co-produced with Andreas Thiel, Jeanette Würl and Klaus Maeck, is the second part of a planned trilogy called "Love, death and the devil" which was preceded by "Head-On" (2004). It premiered In competition at the sixtieth Cannes Film Festival in 2007 and is a Germany-Italy-Turkey co-production which was shot on location in Hamburg and Bremen in Germany, in Taksim and Kadiköy in Istanbul and at the Black Sea in Trabzon in Turkey. It tells the story about Ali Aksu, a widowed and retired Turkish immigrant who lives in Bremen. One day Ali meets a Turkish prostitute named Yeter whom he grows affectionate about. Ali is looking for a partner and offers Yeter to pay her the same amount that she earns working at the brothel if she comes to live with him. Yeter agrees and moves in with Ali, but after having met his German son, a professor who lives in Hamburg, Yeter gets into an argument with Ali that leads to him being sent to jail and his son traveling to Istanbul in order to find Yeter's 27-year-old daughter Ayten whom he thinks is a student. Acutely and engagingly directed by filmmaker F Akin, this humane and compassionately narrated fictional tale which is set in Germany and Turkey during the early 21st century, draws an incisive portrayal of a young Turkish woman who is searching for her mother, the relationship between a German professor and his father and the relationship between a German student and her mother. While notable for it's naturalistic milieu depictions, the fine production design by art director Sirma Bradley and production designer Tamo Kunz, cinematography by Swiss cinematographer Rainer Klausmann and editing by English-born film editor Andrew Bird, this humorous, tragic and romantic story depicts several studies of character and examines themes like family relations, cultural clash, forgiveness, death and love. This universal, character-driven and finely tuned European film which has the lives of six characters intertwining, contains a fine score by German DJ Shantel and is impelled and reinforced by it's fragmented narrative structure and the empathic and involving acting performances by Turkish actor, playwright and producer Tuncel Kurtiz, Turkish-German actor Baki Davrak, Turkish stage and film actress Nurgül Yesilcay, Turkish-born German actress Nursel Köse and German actress and singer Hanna Schygulla. A multifaceted and invariably moving drama which gained, among numerous other awards, the award for Best Screenplay at the sixtieth Cannes Film Festival in 2007, the European Film Award for European Screenwriter at the 20th European Film Awards in 2007 and the NSFC Award for Best Supporting actress Hanna Schygulla at the 43rd National Society of Film Critics Awards in 2009.

The Edge of Heaven is a rich, deeply engrossing character study combining the scope of something like Altman's Short Cuts with the sociopolitical punch of a film like Sarah Gavron's Brick Lane; the cherry on top being that it comes at you with the cut-and-thrust thriller mentality of something like Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton. Faith Akin's film is at once a gripping, unpredictable piece; a homodiegeticaly imbued joint venture between the Germans and the Turkish, arriving with a studious eye on what constitutes as involving filmmaking that goes on to cover a handful of people making, or having already made, great leaps two and from these respective nations. Akin's multi-stranded piece is a taut, gleeful film observing an array of differing people of varying genders at separate points in their respective lives, all of whom come to interact and dislodge with one another's existences out of a common thematic of ill-induced power exchanges.We begin with that of Nejat (Davrak), a character of whom, at the initial point of first observation, is far and away down the winding strand he'll eventually come to end up on. He walks through a petrol station somewhere on the coast of the Black Sea, the speaking over some internal music with an employee revealing Nejat's decidedly unfamiliar rapport with the place when he is told of a famous local musician's recent death. The flashback, one of many shifts in time the film will administer, reveals the man to be travelling by train, rather by than that of the transport we first observed him use, to the German city of Breman to visit his father Ali (Kurtiz). The flashback reveals Nejat's ability to read and speak English, a foreign language to him, and that he is a lecturer; he self-identifies himself as a "gentleman" and is in binary opposition of sorts to that of his father.Ali is a single man who likes to gamble, during which he specifically enjoys backing those of whose chances of winning appear fruitless. The man shares a steady affinity with that of Yeter (Köse), a woman that catches Ali's attention out of his desire for a domestic based female presence, a presence that arrives squarely with that of Yeter whose Turkish origins and whose certain qualities, as a prostitute, more than tick the right boxes. Where Nejat and Ali appear to put up with one another, neither party necessarily seeing any more of the other for periods longer than would appear tolerable, Akin weaves a fascinating little tale out of Ali and Yeter's eventual realisation that one's personal relationship does not equate to the equivalent of that of their professional one. Upon garnering her permanent presence at his home, paid for out of his own pension, Akin allows the bubbles of carbonated gas evident in a glass of freshly poured soda to dominate the soundtrack as Nejat and off-chance-lover-turned-new-found-partner Yeter are forced into becoming acquainted during a meal time.Where the majority of those of a Turkish disposition are sleazy, lecherous, drunkard and somewhat unpleasant; and those of a German ilk, or of a German born variety, are intelligent, informed and articulate, Akin constructs his second prominent strand subverting such things. Predominantly, the second story covers that of Ayten (Yesilçay), Yeter's daughter, and her relationship to that of a German girl Charlotte (Ziolkowska). Ayten is a free thinking female in the hotbed of political strife that is Turkey, strife which comes about when such characteristics rear themselves within such people. Illegally fleeing to Germany after storing a policeman's gun that she found in the street in an obscure hiding place, she comes under the tutorship of not only university student Charlotte, but also her mischievous ways of drinking; smoking and the frequenting of nightspots – items which have an ill influence on this empowered and activist-inspired-amidst-repression Turk.The film is bookended by this overhanging idea of power and control influencing for the bad, the conditions under which Ayten lived in Turkey coming across as regimental and false; the idea that Charlotte's mother Susanne (Schygulla), who is later granted a story of her own in the fallout of a tragedy, is too lenient and cannot implement the necessary authority to steer her daughter in the right direction, is additionally prominent. A snapshot from one of Nejat's lectures reveals talk of the dangers of such dramatic shifts in power or political influence, whereas Akin includes an instance in the film during which portraits of varying dictators hang periodically on walls, all the while accompanied by very little else so as to extenuate their presence, as the camera shifts to encompass one of them before lingering for a few seconds. Aside from this, and everything else that makes it work, the film is a wondrous example of stripped down filmmaking made with the sort of confidence and aplomb that opens your eyes to new worlds and delivers the various issues and dilemmas featured in a brash, involving fashion - to say that it works fantastically is somewhat understating it.

I just watched this film on the BBC iPlayer without knowing anything about the film or the director. I'm so glad that I actually took the time to see it. It overflows with human emotions, ranging from anger to romance, grief and forgiveness; an amazing story, as true as real life with characters that you can easily connect to which are brought to life by an exceptional cast. The film itself contains some spoilers that I originally thought were annoying but you then realise that the way the film is structured and the way the plot unfolds, are all elements a very cohesive output that is both creative and compelling. In terms of photography, I really loved some of the shots but I do not think that this was a priority for the director; and rightly so because the pace, story and emotions are so strong that I think any emphasis on photography would have took something away from the experience. Overall, a very nice surprise for me that will definitely make me watch some of the director's other films. Highly recommended.