★★★★☆
Levan Akin’s road movie about an odyssey from Georgia to Turkey is notably more authentic than his internationally acclaimed And Then We Danced.
The first time I crossed the border between Georgia and Turkey, I was also looking for someone — my mum. She had gone to Istanbul the year before, in 2015, to find a job because it was almost impossible to survive in rural western Georgia, a scenario that is also depicted in the beginning of Swedish–Georgian director Levan Akin’s latest film, Crossing.
As I crossed the border by bus to meet my mum in Istanbul, I tried to imagine how she was feeling when she left the country without any guarantees or an exact date of return. Back then I blamed myself, because I moved to Tbilisi to study at university and I needed financial support. Later, my mum told me that helping her family was not the only reason she left — she had also run away from an extremely claustrophobic environment and in order to find something just for herself. The protagonist of Crossing follows this same path.
The film opens on Georgia’s seaside where the fearless-looking teenage Achi (Luca Kankava) reunites with middle-aged retired teacher Lia (Mzia Arabuli). The two then embark on a journey to find Lia’s missing niece and Achi’s former neighbour, a trans woman called Tekla — their journey, however, tests the personal identities they themselves were forced to create within Georgian society to survive, leading them to discover their true selves and a home far from their official homeland, which never felt like one.
This journey mostly takes place in Turkey, which, especially its capital Istanbul, has long been a shelter for many Georgians. Even though right-wing nationalists have been trying to invent an enemy out of our southern neighbor as a distraction from Russia, I have never seen a Georgian person who has not fallen in love with Istanbul. The same thing happens for Lia and Achi.
‘Istanbul is a place […] where people come to disappear’, Lia says in the film — though we can see that this is also a place where escape can lead to discovery.
The camera shows many mesmerising shots, the most astonishing of which occurs when Lia comes out her shell, allowing herself to let loose and dance. Cinema is full of moments in which characters go through a metamorphosis to find freedom, but this scene is especially notable for the generation Lia represents — Georgian women over 40 are peculiarly cut off from expressing individuality, being cheerful, or looking sexy and flirty.
Expressing yourself while dancing was the main theme of Akin’s most acclaimed movie And Then We Danced (2019), where the main character manages to perform the very masculine-coded Georgian traditional dance in the way he feels as a queer person. However, as a Georgian viewer, the film gave the impression it was a touristic guide of Georgia for Western audiences. Unlike that film, Akin succeeds in making Crossing less cliché, predictable, and full of stereotypes.
While some might describe And Then We Danced as ‘a Georgian gay drama’ and Crossing as ‘another trans drama’, the latter film breaks banal categories and tries to explore wider perspectives. It has its own cinematic heart, making for a unique and memorable viewing experience.
It is also a beautiful story about the possibility of dialogue and connection between different generations, even when this might seem impossible. For example, while at the beginning of the film, Achi’s older brother calls him ‘degenerate’ and ‘useless’ — terms commonly used in reference to Georgia’s younger generations, especially by those older than them — Lia takes a different mindset. Rather than fooling herself or anyone else by pretending to be better, she admits her own mistakes and weaknesses, helping her to have empathy both with others like Achi as well as with herself.
In the end, one of the film’s most important questions is whether Tekla wanted to be found. After watching — as everyone around me in Georgia, especially queer people, are thinking of moving abroad at any cost — I have begun to ask: when we leave, will there be anyone here who would want to find us?
Film details: Crossing (2024), directed by Levan Akin. It will be screened in the UK on 4 October as part of the London Georgian Film Festival. It is also available to view on Amazon Prime.
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