Bath Film Festival 2008

The Edge of Heaven (Auf der Anderen Seite)

Download film note by Nels Stanley

Fatih Akin (Head-On) delivers a magnificent rumination upon the intersection of the political and the personal which derives much of its power from a sense of individuals in the grip of events beyond their control. The multi-layered narrative concerns a second generation German Turk's efforts to make reparations for the death at the hands of his father of a Turkish woman. Travelling to Istanbul to seek out her daughter, he rediscovers his roots. Meanwhile the daughter, a radical political activist, has fled to Germany, where she befriends a university student who in turn pursues her lover back to Istanbul. The lives of all are shaped by forces they can barely identify, let alone understand, and the scope of Akin's ambition here marks him as a new master of European cinema. ‘Utterly assured, profoundly moving' - Variety. CB

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