CANNES FILM FESTIVAL: Winner, Best Screenplay

THE EDGE OF HEAVEN

Begins Friday, May 23

 

Head-On, Fatih Akin’s edgy romance between two German Turks, was a smash hit in Germany in 2003. His new drama, The Edge of Heaven, winner of the best screenplay award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, expands Akin’s emotional universe. Sexual desire gets the story in motion, but the real love story is between parents and their children. In Bremen: Ali (veteran Turkish actor Tuncel Kurtiz), a retired widower asks a prostitute and fellow Turkish native, Yeter, to move in with him and introduces her to his disappoving son Nejat (Baki Davrak). In Hamburg: Ayten (Nurgul Yesilcay), an outspoken political activist who flees her home in Turkey, finds refuge in the arms of Lotte, a German student who lives with her mother (iconic German actress Hanna Schygulla of Fassbinder fame). The death of Yeter, who is Ayten’s mother, is the stroke that releases the flow of characters from Germany to Istanbul, forming a rich dramatic arc that captures the tensions and enduring bonds between sacrificing parents and their rebellious offspring. The German-born son of Turkish guest workers, Akin has a foot in each culture, a stance which affords him a fine eye for the nuances that weave these lives into an engrossing film. –Tomoko Kawamoto 

Turkey/Germany, 2007, 116 min, color, German, Turkish and English with English Subtitles