Film
The Edge of Heaven

Fatih Akin Summer Cinema

Thu, 07/19/2018
6:00 PM Goethe-Institut Chicago

Director: Fatih Akin, colour, 120 min., 2006/07, German with English subtitles

When the widower Ali persuaded prostitute Yeter to move in with him, his son Nejat is irritated. Nejat only thaws when he learns that she regularly sends her daughter Ayten money for her studies. After Yeter's sudden death, Nejat travels to Turkey to look for Ayten. The political activist Ayten, however, fled from the Turkish police to Germany and went underground with a young woman, Lotte. When she is picked up by the police and sent back to Turkey, Lotte starts looking for her girlfriend.
Six fates that cross each other on the Hamburg-Istanbul axis, which are transformed and matured in the encounter with death. "My most spiritual film," says Akin.

Fatih Akin, born in Hamburg in 1973 as the son of Turkish immigrants, belongs to the first generation of immigrant children. He brought their perspective to German cinema and surprised with his first two feature films "Short and Painless" (1998) and "In July'" (2000). Akin told stories from his personal experience and played with the genre patterns of gangster film and romance. Thus he found an idiosyncratic mix of author- and genre cinema.