On The Edge of Heaven, by Faith Akin (2007)

This was a much more sombre movie, quite a shift from seeing Outsourced just half an hour earlier. Gone was the exuberant sound track (this movie has hardly any sound at all) and fast pace. Instead, death predominates - the two central sections were announced off by reference to deaths and then showed how those deaths happened. I'm sure there was more going on than I was aware of, because I'm not really up with the current situation of Turks in Germany (the central concern of this movie).

In the first main section, "The death of Yeter", Ali Aksu (Tuncil Kurtiz) has moved from Turkey to Bremen, in Germany. He's a widower and pensioner and, it seems, lonely. He does a deal with Yeter (Nursel Köse) by which she will stop being a hooker and live with him if he pays her the same as she'd earn on the street. He's an unpleasant drunk, but luckily this particular segment of the movie was not long. I'm not sure why, but after Yeter dies, Ali's son Nejat (Baki Davrak) tries to find Yeter's estranged daughter, Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay). This search provides the only slightly humurous element to the movie, as she ends up in his house, possibly without him ever knowing it - the movie ends with Nejat out on the Black Sea coast wanting to re-connect with his dad.

To say how Ayten was in Nejat's house would be to give too much away. She is in some sort of political movement struggling against the Turkish Government: it has decided she's a terrorist. She flees to Bremen to find her mother - I think there is even one point where their paths cross - but instead finds Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), who takes her in to her home and to her heart. The happiness is not to last: sheer bad luck sees Ayten deported back to Turkey, where she's imprisoned. Lotte devotes her life to seeking Ayten's freedom, much to her mum's displeasure. But bad luck intervenes yet again, and there's another death. Or maybe it wasn't luck, maybe it was a death ordained by events Ayten had triggered.