Film Review: Crossing ★★★★

Writer-director-producer-co-editor Levan Akin’s alluring fourth feature, Crossing, world premiered at the 2024 Berlinale where it won the Teddy jury prize, honouring the festival’s best queer film, before going on to pick up more awards at Guadalajara, Sunny Bunny, and Sofia Pride. Following his 2019 gay coming-of-age drama And Then We Danced, and his recent directing stint on the first two seasons of the GALECA TV Dorian Award-nominated AMC series Interview with the Vampire, Crossing is the work of a mature filmmaker in assured command of his form.

As the film opens we meet Achi (Lucas Kankava), a young man living in uncomfortably close quarters with his domineering, irritable older brother Zaza (Levan Bochorishvili) and his long-suffering wife Ruso (Nino Karchava), in a Georgian village on the outskirts of Batumi near the border with Turkey. Achi is frequently shirtless, which, along with coping with the heat, seems to represent the character’s desire for freedom. His brother sees it as inappropriate behaviour around his wife which he berates him for, underscoring both his insecurity and, in the younger man’s more relaxed decorum, the generational difference between the siblings, with Zaza deridingly referring to Achi as one of the “degenerates” who is part of “Georgia’s future”.

Achi quickly sees his way out when their home is unexpectedly visited by a rather buttoned-up, retired school teacher, Lia (Mzia Arabuli), who is looking for information about her estranged niece, Tekla, a trans woman in her late twenties. Claiming to know Tekla and have information about her whereabouts, Achi offers to go to Istanbul with Lia to help track her down. Zaza’s strong reaction to the word trans being casually mentioned by Achi makes apparent the societal prejudice that he shares and feels obliged to demonstrate. Lia, on the other hand, speaks about Tekla in a relatively neutral way, never dead-naming or misgendering her niece, but she clearly hasn’t always been as accepting.

Later in the film, Lia reflects on the stir that Tekla coming out as trans caused in the village and the shame that it brought on the family, blaming her for its break up. She also reveals that she made a deathbed promise to her late sister that she would track down her missing daughter on her behalf and she is laser-focused on fulfilling it, whether Tekla wants to be found or not. As she boldly puts herself out of her comfort zone, Lia also seems to have her own unspoken reasons for reuniting with her niece. With no children of her own, she was close with Tekla as she was growing up, and her unwavering determination reads as if finding her will be her final act.

Achi has never left Georgia before and is surprised that things don’t feel drastically different as soon as they cross the border into Turkey, but Lia assures him that he will know he is another country when they arrive in Istanbul. She has only been there once before as a child, but the experience made a lasting impression on her and inspired her to teach history. Bustling with people—and stray cats—Akin immerses us in the backstreets of a city that feels grounded in reality rather than a movie location, as he uncovers its beauty in unexpected places.

With an intriguing premise, the first part of Crossing plays out like an intergenerational odd couple road movie as the pair make their way to Turkey on the long bus ride along the Black Sea and then share a room in the meagre accommodation that their budget will stretch to, even after Lia pawns some of her most valued possessions. Tension and humour arise from how different they are, and the chemistry between the actors makes their scenes together really sizzle as the warmth between them ever so gradually becomes more apparent. Kankava brings an endearingly spirited energy and scrappiness to Achi, a young man with a blend of street smarts and naïveté. Abandoned by his mother, he has clearly been shown little affection and he scoffs down any food that is put in front of him as if it was the first time he has eaten in weeks and might be his last meal.

Arabuli has a formidable screen presence and she exudes the character’s single-mindedness and sense of purpose, not just in her steely eyes and wonderfully expressive face, but in every part of her being. As she seeks any scrap of information about Tekla, there is a compelling intensity to the way Arabuli listens. Although she has a dry, cutting sense of humour, Lia is often stoic, but when emotion does surface on her face it is powerfully affecting. Bemoaning the way that modern Georgian women conduct themselves, Lia herself dresses somberly and modestly, covered in black, presumably still in mourning for her sister whom she cared for at home. One evening though, she allows herself to relax and dance, something we get the impression she hasn’t done for decades. This offers an insight into a completely different side of the character as she applies lipstick admiring herself in a mirror and flirts with a Georgian business man living in Istanbul whom she believes can help them. It is a simple, yet delightfully rich and nuanced sequence. At one point Lia observes that Istanbul is a place where people come to disappear, but for her and Achi it also feels like a place to find or rediscover oneself.

In a parallel narrative, we follow Evrim (Deniz Dumanli), a trans woman in her early thirties who recently graduated from the University of Istanbul with a law degree and volunteers for Turkish trans rights NGO Pembe Hayat (Pink Life, a real organization founded in 2006). Evrim’s world is a vibrant one, and through her we are introduced to an array trans women in Istanbul, including those doing survival sex work. It is a striking portrait of a marginalized community looking out for itself. With some excellent casting, many of the actors in these roles give lively, characterful performances and make a lasting impression with just a few lines and comparatively short screen time.

Along with her pragmatism, Evrim is filled with a defiant optimism despite the challenges that the world has thrown at her and continues to in the hostility of the police who mock her when she tells them that she is a trained lawyer and the indifference of the medical professionals who charge countless fees just to rubber stamp her paperwork for an ID card in line with her gender. While the man she has been dating won’t be seen in public with her, there is promise of a new romance with the handsome Ömer (Ziya Sudancikmaz), an unlicensed taxi driver studying to be a geography teacher who has no such hang-ups, and the flirty scenes between them are a lot of fun. Evrim radiates kindness, strength and resilience without any resentment, and Dumanli is captivating in the role. As a thriving trans woman with a career doing meaningful work, hers is a life that is likely in stark contrast to the one that Lia imagines her niece has been living in Istanbul.

Akin’s editing (with Emma Lagrelius) has a seductive flow to it, allowing each scene space to breathe, and the two main narrative strands never feel disjointed as the lead characters tantalizingly come close to brushing up against one another before finally meeting in the third act. Crossing is an unhurried, delicate film but one that is pulsating with life. Keeping his screenplay tight allows Akin to revel in the small details, such as simple gestures between characters that carry unspoken emotional weight, like the baklava that Achi brings back for Lia, carefully wrapped in a napkin, or the slice of apple that Lia offers to Evrim.

Beautifully shot, Akin reunites with his And Then We Danced cinematographer Lisabi Fridell with stunning results. Fridell gives the film an intoxicating immediacy with a combination of handheld vérité-style work along with some poetic, gliding camera sequences, including a gorgeous shot that introduces us to Evrim, drenched in sunlight on the upper deck of a ferry as the water glistens behind her. Another immersive sequence uses one long continuous take as the camera explores the inside of a ferry, landing on some resourceful young kids, Izzet and Gülpembe (Bünyamin Değer and Sema Sultan Elekci), who have been left to survive on their own playing music for money. At times, we get another perspective on the city as we follow the kids as they navigate Istanbul, including how they view Achi, Lia, and Evrim.

Akin helps to keep us thoroughly absorbed in the world that he has created by largely avoiding a traditional score—with a few rare exceptions, including one particularly poignant sequence—instead incorporating diegetic music, such as Gülpembe’s busking, along with a richly evocative aural cityscape by sound designers Sigrid Dpa Jensen and Anne Gry Friis Kristensen.

Ultimately, Crossing is profoundly moving in the way that it deals with the familial rejection that far too many queer and trans people throughout the world grow up fearing or experiencing, the heartbreaking, senseless loss of those years of estrangement, and the lingering, however unlikely, potential for people to see the error of their ways and evolve. It is a theme that Akin breathes fresh life into as he explores what connects us as humans, the bonds of blood family and the power of chosen family rising up to support itself.

By James Kleinmann

Levan Akin’s Crossing opens in US theaters on July 19th and starts streaming on Mubi on August 30th, 2024.