Souls in Transit

Abstract

In Fatih Akin s film The Edge of Heaven,¹ the main characters engage in various exilic journeys on their way to self-discovery. Departing from death/pain, their travels take them to new places both outwardly and within. Foreigners to others and to themselves, they live in limbo, outside the mythical circle of life, a state viewers of the films are able to experience because of the space and time configurations of Akin s film text, which invokes in them the notion of diaspora (Zerstreuung,). Through the characters’ criss-crossings and other spatial and temporal markers, The Edge of Heaven heightens the very space of transit and transition. Typical of many films including the genre of the road movie, from which Akin borrows, this film does not emphasize the female traveling experience, but it does underline women’s souls tran-sitioning and arriving at a new “home,” something denied the male protagonist, NejatAksu, who, as the foreigner, never arrives.