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In this moving Turkish movie on healing and starting over again, writer-director Levan Akin takes his two generation-challenged protagonists on a journey of self-discovery.

Okay, that sounds fairly cliched as far as road movies are concerned. But wait! Crossing is not what we think. It is a work of fragile beauty. It draws its strength from the flaws and fragilities of its characters, neither judging nor condemning them for their fatal weaknesses.

Lia (Mzia Arabuli ) is a veteran who has braved many war wounds…not at the border, but within her home front where the scars tell stories of immense family betrayals. Lia is now off to look for her transgender niece, whom Lia’s sister and Lia failed to support.

So, is this an atonement or an adventure? Perhaps a bit of both. Writer-director Levan Akin lets Liya and her unlikely travelling partner, a young restless teen named Achi...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

Besides my annual trip to the Toronto International Film Festival—at which I mostly saw films that have not yet been released stateside—I went to the movie theater twice this year. As someone who used to go at least once a week, coming to grips with that number is tough.

It happened for many reasons. Covid. Time constraints. The ease of truncated theatrical windows. And the worsening theatrical experience itself since one of those two visits (both press screenings) demanded three restarts before finally figuring out the correct aspect ratio. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad they kept working to get it right because that film appears on this list, but you can’t tell me it would have been fixed had it been a regular public screening.

Levan Akin’s Crossing is now showing exclusively on Mubi in many countries.Crossing.Levan Akin’s tender, pensive new film begins in Batumi, the Georgian city where his family is from, and soon finds itself in Istanbul, “a place where people come to disappear,” as one character later muses. Forces of prejudice and patriarchy oppress these sister cities. In Batumi, Achi (Lucas Kankava) wakes to the sounds of a television talk show in a ramshackle house between the train tracks and the sea. A window over the sofa on which he sleeps frames the protean Black Sea, which hints at an escape route for the restless youth.When a former schoolteacher, Lia (Mzia Arabuli), comes looking for her lost niece, Tekla, who was turned out by her family after transitioning, Achi’s hateful brother complains about “prostitutes” and “degenerates” in their midst. Having been evicted from the nearby cottage where she had been living,...

Crossing, the fourth feature film from Swedish filmmaker Levan Akin (And Then We Danced), opens with white serif text that reads: “Both Georgian and Turkish are gender-neutral languages: they make no distinction of grammatical gender.” This linguistic factoid becomes instantly relevant as the film focuses on one Georgian woman’s...

There’s no description of Levan Akin’s Crossing that won’t make it sound like the kind of feel-good dramedy which would have taken Sundance by storm in 2006. It has all the key ingredients: an inter-generational friendship forged between a curmudgeonly retired teacher and a young burnout desperate to escape his hometown; an epic road trip where they come to understand each other more; and the older of the two confronting her internal bigotry as they search for her transgender niece. Above all, any description makes this sound like the worst kind of LGBTQ story, which we finally seem to have moved past as a culture––the story of queer people aimed firmly at a straight audience. It’s understandable why anybody would be skeptical of Crossing, or at least consider it outdated if not ill-intentioned, from a distance.

But as with And Then We Danced, his debut that emerged at the 2019 Directors’ Fortnight,...

In Crossing, Lia (Mzia Arabuli), a retired history teacher from Georgia, partners with a boy in his late teens, Achi (Lucas Kankava), to find her long-lost niece, a trans woman who goes by Tekla (Tako Kurdovanidze). It’s an unlikely partnership between the severe, matronly Lia and the incorrigible Achi, whose priority is to escape his older brother’s oppressive household. He tells Lia he has Tekla’s address in Istanbul, offering to serve as a guide and translator, and the two set out the next morning to cross the Georgian border into Turkey. A parallel narrative follows Evrim (Deniz Dumanli), a trans woman and former sex worker starting to live her best life in Istanbul, having recently obtained her law degree and official female ID.

Lia and Achi’s search takes them all over Istanbul, and on one level, Levan Akin’s film is a love letter to the city.

A trio of excellent performances drives this intelligent film from Levan Akin, in which a Georgian woman and her young sidekick head to the big city

The title wears its wan and melancholy significance a little heavily, and the trompe l’oeil ending is rather mannered, with the kind of flourish that I last saw in Florian Zeller’s film The Son. But Crossing is a thoroughly intelligent, emotionally engaging and robustly performed movie from Levan Akin, the Georgian-Swedish director who had an international breakthrough four years ago with the love story And Then We Danced.

Here, Georgian actor Mzia Arabuli plays Lia, a retired, unmarried history teacher and a person of dignity and high standards for herself and others. She is now on a mission to find her missing niece, a trans woman called Tekla who has crossed the border into Turkey and may now be in Istanbul; Lia...

After the critically acclaimed “And Then We Danced” from 2019, Levan Akin comes back with another movie that critiques societal norms in relation to the Lgbtqia+ themes. The film, inspired by a heart-warming story about a senior who was supportive of his trans grandchild, premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Panorama Audience Award, and won the Teddy Award.

The story, written by Akin himself, follows Lia (Mzia Arabuli), as she tries to find and bring her transgender niece back home. According to her unexpected companion, Achi (Lucas Kankava), she went to Istanbul. These two set off on a journey to the capital of Turkey, where they explore new surroundings, as well as themselves.

“Crossing”, unlike “And Then We Danced”, doesn't have a classic narrative structure – the scenes are not always directly connected, and thus it is not the easiest to follow. The movie...

"Are you sure she wants to be found?" A very good question. Mubi has revealed the official trailer for an indie drama titled Crossing, set for release this summer in select US theaters (and eventually streaming on Mubi for everyone else). This first premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, and stopped by the BFI Flare London Lgbtqia+ Film Festival in March. From acclaimed director Levan Akin (And Then We Danced), this is a moving & tender tale of identity, acceptance and unlikely connection that transcends borders. Lia, a retired teacher, has promised to find her long-lost niece, Tekla – a trans woman she hasn't seen in a long time. Her search takes her to Istanbul where she meets Evrim, a lawyer fighting for trans rights, and Tekla starts to feel closer than ever. This looks especially beautiful & heartwarming, with some positive reviews out of the fests. Starring Mzia Arabuli,...

“And Then We Danced” director Levan Akin returns with another intense and moving queer drama, “Crossing.” Winner of a jury prize at the 2024 Berlinale Film Festival and will next screen next week at Tribeca Festival, “Crossing” opens in arthouses across the country later this summer. IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer for the film below.

Where “And Then We Danced” centered on the romance between two young male dancers, the Swedish director’s latest bridges the gap between generations: Mzia Arabuli stars as Lia, a retired, world-weary schoolteacher on a journey from Batumi in Georgia to Istanbul in Turkey to find her missing trans niece Tekla, and Deniz Dumanli as Evrim, a trans Ngo lawyer who looks like an Anna Magnani, and is someone the movie at first dupes us into thinking is Lia’s niece. Along for the ride with Lia is Lucas Kankava as Achi, a Georgian teenager who...

Visiting Istanbul, you can’t help but notice all of the cats: The Turkish metropolis is swarming with strays, some gorgeous and friendly, others haggard and more stand-offish. Entire films have been made about the phenomenon (of which “Kedi” was an especially popular example). But what of the countless other souls — the human ones — who also live on the margins of this modern city? They too are invisible until noticed. But if you look closely, it becomes impossible to unsee the homeless children and street sellers, sex workers and immigrants, many of them struggling to survive.

With “Crossing,” writer-director Levan Akin wants to open our eyes to the easily overlooked. After earning international acclaim with Cannes-selected queer drama “And Then We Danced,” Akin makes a calculated choice to raise awareness of the trans community in Istanbul, but he does so through representation rather than manipulation. “Crossing” tells the engaging if...

Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2023 Berlin Film Festival. Mubi will release “Crossing” in select theaters on Friday, July 19 before it streams August 30.

In “Crossing,” the new film from “And Then We Danced” director Levan Akin, the earthy spirit of Italian icon Anna Magnani is channeled by not one but two actresses who resemble her. There’s Mzia Arabuli as Lia, a retired schoolteacher on a journey from Batumi in Georgia to Istanbul in Turkey to find her missing trans niece, and Deniz Dumanli as Evrim, the trans Ngo lawyer the movie dupes us into thinking is Lia’s niece. The two women are as far apart on the joie de vivre spectrum as any pair could be — Lia has calcified into an emotionless stone who gives away nothing, while Evrim lives freely and sexually liberated in an otherwise LGBTQ-challenged country — yet “Crossing” movingly bridges the space...

Art house streaming platform Mubi has picked up all rights in North America, the U.K., Germany and Latin America for Crossing, the new feature from Swedish director Levan Akin (And Then We Danced).

Mubi snatched up Crossing ahead of this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where it will have its world premiere, opening Berlin’s Panorama sidebar.

The film follows Lia, a retired teacher living in Batumi, Georgia, who sets out to fulfill her recently deceased sister’s last wish: to find Tekla, her long-lost daughter. The road trip takes her to Istanbul where she meets up with Evrim, a trans rights lawyer who might be the key to finding Lia’s niece. Mzia Arabuli, Lucas Kankava and Deniz Dumanli star. The film was produced by Sweden’s French Quarter Film in co-production with Rmv and Svt in Sweden, Adomeit Film of Denmark, France’s Easy Riders Films, Bir...