Summer 2024 was a formative movie-going time, despite the poor box-office performance worldwide and the lack of bombshell releases like Barbenheimer. I went to festivals in Cannes and Sarajevo and to arthouse cinemas in France regularly. Surprisingly, the film that best encapsulated my feelings towards this seasonal break was a gentle road movie from Istanbul called Crossing, written and directed by Swedish queer filmmaker Levan Akin. The protagonist Lia’s (Mzia Arabuli) quest to find an estranged relative contrasted with my summer study abroad, an active attempt to escape from all things familiar.
Crossing begins with meeting Lia, an old Georgian woman mourning the loss of her sister, and Achi (Lucas Kankava), an unemployed twenty-something struggling to find his purpose in life. To fulfill the dying wish of her sister, Lia searches for her long-lost trans niece around the villages of Batumi, until Achi finally offers her a potential address in Istanbul. Understanding Istanbul as an opportunity to start anew, Achi joins Lia in her quest, and the film becomes a road movie.
At first, the narrative meanders, jumping between misadventures irrelevant to Lia’s primary mission. Yet, the film builds momentum, what’s more, suspense, through its formal deceits. For example, an experimental sequence introduces the third protagonist, Evrim (Deniz Dumanli) and the duo, Achi and Lia, fresh off the international bus, board the ferry crossing the Bosphorus into Istanbul’s European side. As they get on the boat, the camera suddenly shifts its gaze away from Achi and Lia, surveying the other passengers. The extended shot lands on a pensive woman smoking a cigarette by the deck, inviting the viewer to ask: is this who Lia’s looking for?
Aesthetically, Crossing has been described as “Istanbul porn,” jam-packed with gorgeous Istanbul cityscapes, baklava, and mesmerizing Turkish music. Yet it hardly comes off as fetishistic: the heightened allure of the city is employed to amplify the alienation and catharsis felt by the foreign characters.
The film’s wandering path is its gift; writer-director Akin highlights the granularities of travel, the awkward humor and unexpected joys that accompany every voyage. In Crossing’s dance scene (a signature of Akin’s films), taking place at a wedding party where Evrim, Lia, and Achi crash, the plot reaches its epic peak within a simple exchange. By avoiding melodrama, the film centers on the friends made along the way, rather than the journey itself. It captures the recurring feeling I felt this summer—that I’d changed in a new place, in ways unexpected.
And just like his characters, for Akin, Crossing is a personal rite of passage. A queer Swede with Turkish parents of Georgian descent, Akin has built his career by reconciling his roots in the Caucasus with his upbringing as a Western outsider, highlighting radical queer stories in the region. His previous feature, And Then We Danced (2019), a fiery romance between traditional Georgian dancers, was considered the first LGBTQ+ film made in Georgia and sparked both outrage and fanfare across the country. Crossing is Akin’s gentle creation amidst this polarization: the film’s familial bonds gracefully overcome their historical context without vindication. At a time when queer rights are under attack globally (Georgia just passed an anti-LGBTQ bill in its parliament, considered a major step-back for human rights), Akin draws upon his heritage and viewers are asked to enter the passage, carefully holding this weight.
