If you’re looking for a way to learn how Europeans feel about their country and their continent, who better to ask than filmmakers from each and every country in the European Union. Well back in 2004 somebody did just that and Visions of Europe came to be. For the series, one prominent filmmakers from each EU country was asked to make a 5 minute film on “the current state of Europe.”

The directors included Austria’s Barbara Albert, Germany’s Fatih Akin, Finland’s Aki Kaurismaki Denmark’s Christoffer Boe, The UK’s Peter Greenaway and the Netherlands Theo van Gogh What resulted was a telling look at the political and personal landscape of Europe since the EU came to be.

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Fatih Akin has been on my movie radar since I saw his 2000 film In July. From there I saw his short film in the program Visions of Europe, which I enjoyed and then on to the first film in his Love, Death, Devil trilogy Head On, which I absolutely loved. I was lucky enough to see an advanced screening of the second film in that trilogy, The Edge of Heaven on Saturday afternoon (part of The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Film Comment Selects series.)

The Edge of Heaven, as you might imagine, deals with death, but it does so through a moving examination of fathers and sons and mothers and daughters as they navigate between two countries whose connection is always changing, Germany and Turkey.

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