The Edge of Heaven (Germany 2007) The Edge of Heaven (Germany 2007, 116 min, dir: Fatih Akin. cast: Baki Davrak, Nurgul Yesilcay, Hanna Schygulla).

Germans and Turks have built a symbiotic culture with Turks like American Whites have with American Blacks. With us, slavery was the original sin. With them, it is BMW. In the boom years of the German auto industry there were not enough Germans to build all the cars. So they imported “guest” workers from Turkey with the idea they would fill out the production lines until enough German kinder were born to take their place. The birth rate didn’t go up and the Turks didn’t leave.

Today in major German cities, it is as easy to buy a shwarma as a schnitzel. The cultures clash over religion, neighborhoods, police brutality and jobs. Fatih Akin is part of this clash. His parents emigrated from Turkey to Hamburg, Germany, in the 1960s. The era he grew up in saw upheavals both in German politics and German-Turkish relations. Much of this is captured in The Edge of Heaven, but the politics are of the Turkish-Kurdish radical left and its spill over into Germany society.

What makes The Edge of Heaven so wonderful is Akin has sewn all this cultural and political clamor into a drama about loss and redemption that seals together Germans and Turks in a singular quest for love. A mother grieves for her murdered daughter and redeems that loss by embracing the young woman implicated in her death. A gay young man tries to atone for his father’s accidental killing of a woman prostitute and ends up questing to understand him. All this to the beat of Kazim Koyuncu’s music (check him out on iTunes).

Great movies start with great writing. It’s rare that a writer-director can create a story that treads on the edge of melodrama but never crosses the line. This used to be the definition of great American movies; but no more. Now we look beyond our borders for the films that once defined us. Films that now help define other peoples and other struggles. The mission of MovieWithMe.com is to find them all.