Cosmopolitanism Through Fatih Akin´s Films: The Edge of Heaven, Im Juli and Gegen Die Wand

Cosmopolitanism through Fatih Akin´s Films: The Edge of Heaven, im Juli and Gegen die Wand

Background

In the 1960s, Turkey and Germany signed a labor agreement and after that the first Gastarbeiter "guest workers" came to Germany to contribute its workforce and to fix economic development of warn-tor Germany. These Turkish guest workers were expected to leave home one day, but many of them decided to stay in Germany to earn more money for a better live in Turkey.

Today, around 3 million Turkish people live in Germany and they are not guest workers anymore, instead they are settled member of German society as second and third generation.  Turkish presence changed the demographics of Germany culturally and economically, because these guest workers in those day, they are today´s active agents as employers, politicians, musicians, authors, filmmakers and etc. (by attending German schools and getting higher degree). Beside enriching of German culture and economy, these new generation with their presence brought to a lot of debates about identify crisis, cultural hybridity, cosmopolitanism…

In this article, my aim is to focus on the Turkish –German Filmmaker Fatih Akin with a particular emphasis on how cosmopolitanism is expressed through his films. I will analyze how cosmopolitan his films are. How this term cosmopolitanism is depicted in his films?

The Edge of Heaven: Short a brief summary of the plot

The film starts in Turkey a man drives car and buys some snacks, asks the seller about the song on radio. As audience we do not know who is and where is he going. At the end of movie we get to know this begin scene was the end of story. After that it springs back time-wise and storyline continues in Bremen in Germany. In Bremen, the retired widower Ali, who is emigrated from Turkey, visits a prostitute Yeter and he offers her monthly salary regularly, in order she would move to him to live with him together. She accepts his offer and leaves her job as a prostitute, not because she wants to live with him, otherwise because Islamic fundamentalists are threating her.  She is desperate and does not any perspective. Ali´s son Nejat is professor of German Literature and teaches at Hamburg University. He cannot get used this new situation that Yeter moved to because he lives in the same house with his father too. However, he feels sorry for Yeter and empathizes himself with Yeter after he learnt she was doing everything to afford her daughter`s  school in Turkey. Her daughter Ayten does not know that her mother works as a prostitute in Germany.

Ayten is political activist, who has to flee from Turkish police  to Germany. She looks for her mother by believing her mother works in a shoe store, because she does not know her mother died in the meanwhile. Yeter is dead because of Ali's violent temper, accidentally. Ali goes to jail and Nejat gives up his job and moves to Istanbul to find Yeter´s daughter. In meantime, Ayten is already in Germany and becomes friend with a young woman named Lotte, who invites rebellious Ayten to stay in her home. Lotte`s conservative mother Susanne is not comfortable with it that Lotte invited Ayten to live with them. Lotte and Ayten fallen in love with each other.  After Ayten is arrested by German police, she is deported back to Turkey and is imprisoned there. Lotte travels to Turkey in order to help Ayten… Tragically Lotte get killed by street kids in Istabul und her mother Susanne comes to Istanbul to fulfill her daughter’s wish to help Ayten.

Exploration in Edge of Heaven

This movie through its cosmopolitan characters brings Turkey and Germany together.  Film characters Nejat, Lotte, Ayten, Ali and Susanne are travelling between different locations Turkey and Germany and they are displaced physically and emotionally from each other but they are still connected with each other in these multinational locations. Akin shows his audience, with their mobility the possibilities of movement without border, people have freedom of travelling which makes a cosmopolitan Europe. Multinationals relationships between main characters in movie such Ayten – Lotte,  Susanne –Ayten, or Nejat – Susanne create “transnational and transcultural sense of Europe (Zapanik 2014, 179). Susanne travelling to Istanbul in order to complete Lotte`s mission, although she was not comfortable with that her daughter is helping Ayten, during all process. Overtaking her daughter`s mission which means helping Ayten for her freedom, this shows the audience Susanne`s openness to ‘others’ because she explored a cosmopolitan empathy through her terrible loss.