Rent The Edge of Heaven (2006)

Lilting bittersweet taste of Turkey - The Edge of Heaven review by CP Customer

Featuring a beautiful music score by Shantel, this film follows the lives of a number of Turkish immigrants to Germany, and their coincidental interactions. It touches on political repression, personal and social morals and the far-reaching consequences of our actions. If you are happy to be drawn in to other lives in other cultures and willing to face your own and other's predjudices then this is worth seeing.

Multicultural - The Edge of Heaven review by JD

This brings totally different characters and cultures together into a single plot. I felt it was a bit disjointed and unreal. Why would a professor move countries to help someone he had never met nor likely to. It lacks purpose. Some of the scenes are poorly acted and very plain, some are plain but have real meaning. It is a jumble of Turkish, Kurdish and German stories of lesbians, prostitutes and refugees being happy, sad and angry.

Human Borders. - The Edge of Heaven review by Steve

Complex, understated drama with a political edge, set among the Turkish diaspora in Germany. It's got one of those interwoven, multi-narrative plot designs that were everywhere in the noughties, which demonstrate the interconnection between seemingly random events. 

A Turkish immigrant (Baki Davrak) in Bremen goes to Istanbul to locate the estranged daughter (Nurgül Yesilçay) of a sex-worker killed by his father; meanwhile she claims political asylum in... Bremen, bringing tragedy to a German family. Their lives intersect without them ever quite being aware.

The edge of heaven may be how close their destinies take them to sanctuary. Or simply reflects Turkey's geographical proximity to the EU. The unexpected redemption is the middle aged German mother (Hanna Schygulla) drawn back into political engagement.

But what elevates this above many similar films is the interesting plot device which shifts in time creating a circular narrative that can be entered and exited at any point; the long final shot is like a loop on an old vinyl record. Maybe this is schematic, but still quite satisfying.