Synopsis
The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together.
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Cast
- Nurgül YeşilçayAyten Öztürk
- Baki DavrakNejat Aksu
- Patrycia ZiolkowskaLotte Staub
- Tuncel KurtizAli Aksu
- Nursel KöseYeter Öztürk
- Hanna SchygullaSusanne Staub
- Erkan CanCousin Ufuk
- Nejat İşlerKommissar
- Güven KıraçSicherheitsbeamte
- Lars RudolphHerr Obermüller
Recommendations
- 90
New York Magazine (Vulture)
The Edge of Heaven is powerfully unsettled--it comes together by not coming together. - 90
Newsweek
Schygulla's heartbreaking performance--like the movie itself--will stay with you long after the film's quietly devastating final frame. - 90
The New York Times
By the end you know the characters in it so well that you can't believe you've seen the movie only once, yet on a second viewing it seems completely new. And that may be because the world they inhabit is immediately recognizable -- until we get to heaven, it's where we live -- and like no place you've been before. - 88
TV Guide Magazine
Akin achieves a peaceful balance here –- alongside the death and seemingly senseless tragedy, there’s also a kind of reassuring equilibrium. - 83
The A.V. Club
Akin divides The Edge Of Heaven into thirds, and ends the first two sections with emotionally devastating scenes of violence, before easing into a third section that deals with the repercussions and lessons learned. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
The director, who also wrote the script, achieves a keen-eyed view of the Turkish expatriates in this film while sustaining his remarkable ability to make them universal. - 80
Variety
Superbly cast drama, in which the lives and emotional arcs of six people -- four Turks and two Germans -- criss-cross through love and tragedy. - 80
The New Yorker
I prefer to think of Akin, however, not as a forger of patterns but as an ironist who understands that bad luck is a crucible, in the heat of which we are tested, burned away, or occasionally transformed. The Edge of Heaven is about something more exasperating than crossed paths; it is about paths that almost cross but don't, and the tragedy of the near-miss.
