The Edge of Heaven

2007 Director Faith Akin

This film is about the tension between Germany and Turkey, to whom postwar West Germany opened its doors for "guest-worker" labourers, thereby getting an economic boost but creating for itself an unacknowledged quasi-imperial legacy of guilt and cultural division. And it is about the gulf between the first- and second-generation Turkish-Germans, conflicted about their identity and their relation with the old country, itself conflicted as it prepares to join the European Union.

At the movie's centre is Nejat , a second-generation Turk who has attained what might be the greatest distinction Germany has to offer: he is a university professor, lecturing on Goethe. His rascally old father, Ali, also in Germany, has offered cohabitation rights to the Turkish prostitute Yeter for whom he is a regular, and who is only too eager to escape the bullying Muslim activists who patrol the red-light district - but doesn't see Ali's yet unrevealed darker side.

Having established this fraught, tense family relationship, Akin spins the narrative thread off sideways to investigate the situation of Yeter's fugitive daughter  and her relationship with an idealist young German who between them are reviving the spirit of Baader-Meinhof for a new generation.

It is a glitteringly confident narrative pattern, gesturing at the globalised, historical forces that govern individual lives; in some ways it is like a very, very much better version of Alejandro González Iñárritu's mediocre film Babel - there is some similar business with a handgun - but not as schematic and superficial. The web of happenstance and dramatic reversals of fortune may teeter on the brink of unbelievability, but it is a measure of Akin's confidence as a storyteller that his world so plausibly enfolds us.

Three Monkeys

2008 Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan

At the beginning, Three Monkeys looks more like a slow-burning thriller than anything else. Servet  is a middle-aged politician who accidentally kills a pedestrian in his car, at night, on a remote country road. Panicking and fearing scandal with an election imminent, he flees the scene and later desperately persuades his long-standing driver to take the rap. Servet promises to keep paying his salary into his bank account while he endures the short spell in prison and to pay a lump sum in cash on release. Deeply troubled, but utterly dependent on his employer's goodwill, the driver agrees, and the swallowed humiliation of this shabby deal worsens the already troubled family environment he leaves behind. His wife is a beautiful woman, though hardened and careworn by money worries, and by a family tragedy yet to be disclosed to the audience; his son is a young man in his early 20s who is worrying his parents by flunking out at college and getting in with a rough crowd.

There are aspects of Three Monkeys that look very much like Ceylan's earlier films: he creates wonderful, painterly, yet unsentimental visions of the Istanbul waterfront, and the cinematography and colour-palette this time have a mannered, desaturated look. The passing of the summer and the imminent arrival of winter are important, and there are some domestic images that are something of a motif for this director: people sitting around watching television.

The humble family flat at the beginning of the film is to be the venue for a clever "reveal" from Ceylan, which I suspect other directors may wish to pinch: The wife is asleep on the couch late at night with the TV on; the son, who had promised to be home long before this, creeps in very quietly so as not to wake her and, in shadow, goes to his room. She awakes and is baffled by a drop of blood on the floor; she pulls open her son's bedroom door and she - and we - are shocked to learn that his secret is not merely that he is a dirty stopout; he has been very badly beaten up. It is only now that Ceylan shows us her face in closeup, and we see how beautiful, and how troubled, she is. It is a quietly stylish film-making coup.

The rigour and intensity of Three Monkeys is invigorating - it is nourishing in a way few other films are. And the moments of metaphysical revelation, the arrival of ghosts, are stunning. But I couldn't help feeling that Three Monkeys was an over-egged pudding, a film trying to be too many things in too many styles and moreover poised on the edge of implausibility: a certain murderous act, and subsequent cover-up, are left rather conveniently unexplained. Ceylan has certainly produced an ambitious movie. But this kind of intensely worked drama is a creative cul-de-sac.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

2011 Direcor Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Murder mysteries rarely run as deep as this long, dark night of the soul from Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan. He is a master of brooding stories defined by their wry questioning of human nature and often focused on men in crisis. He has an unflinching eye for the worst in all of us and for the black comedy and absurd banalities of everyday life.

For his sixth film, Ceylan has chosen his bleakest canvas yet: a murder investigation that begins in the dark wilds of the great Anatolian outdoors and ends in the cold light of an autopsy room. In tone, it’s Ceylan’s most epic and talky film yet. But don’t be fooled – it’s also his most mysterious and meditative.We meet a group of a dozen policemen, soldiers and others as they drive about on the steppes one night in search of a body with the two men suspected of burying it. It’s an ensemble piece, and for much of its 158-minute running time, the film itself feels like a painful, fruitless inquiry as it seeks themes, subjects and characters to latch on to. It’s a police procedural, yes, but you imagine that’s just an excuse to bring together a varied group of men in the face of a terrible event. It’s very far indeed from a traditional whodunnit and much more like a compelling, masterly journey.

Uzak

2002 Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Set in a wintry Istanbul this film deals with the complexities of urban isolation.

A photographer's ordered life is thrown into turmoil with the arrival of his country cousin seeking employment in the city. Haunted by the feeling that the gap between his life and his ideals is growing, he grows increasingly irritated by his provincial young relative's encroachment into his colourless world.

This is a cinematic delight. Slow pans and long holds allow the viewer to absorb the atmosphere. The progression of the two characters is done through the medium of expression, because, with the exception of one long outburst by the Photographer, dialogue is sparse. The opening sequence is of particular note. Tarkovsky's influence abounds and Ceylan even managed to squeeze an extract of Stalker into the the frame. Seeing Istanbul covered in snow is such an unusual setting and one, I suspect, came about more by luck than planning. A director of fine talent that reminds me of the work produced by Andrei Zvyagintsev.

Kosmos

2010 Director Keha Erdem

This is Reha Erdem's sixth feature film.  It is a profoundly imaginative and cinematic journey that bursts with philosophical ideas, mystical subplots and truly surreal moments.

A distressed stranger wanders into a snow swept border town where he saves a young boy from drowning. The insular town folk welcome him into their community, but before long they realise that there is more to this stranger than meets the eye. His abstract philosophical musings are his only way of communicating and his reclusive behaviour soon raise suspicions. With the falling to earth of a satellite his situation spirals out of control.

Filmed in Kars, in northern Turkey, in winter conditions, this is a real tour de force and one that marks this director as a visionary creator of films. Is the hero the messiah or just a hapless idiot? I  guess everyone will differ in their interpretation. But this does not detract from the overall effect.