Crossing: Director Levan Akin on his new film, patriarchy and the importance of family

Written by Akin, the film centres on Lia, a retired teacher living in Georgia, who made a promise to find her long-lost niece Tekla. When a young neighbour, Achi, tells her that Tekla, a transgender woman, might be living in Turkey, they set off together to find her. In Istanbul, they discover a beautiful city that seems full of connections and possibilities. 

There they meet Evrim, a lawyer fighting for trans rights who helps them on their quest… but finding someone who never intended to be discovered is harder than they thought. 

Speaking to me from a hotel room in London, Akin says the story was partially inspired by real events. “I read about a man in Georgia who was the grandfather to a trans girl. She had been kicked out of the family home, and he was very supportive of her. He used to go to Tbilisi once a week from the village to meet her and be with her. I thought that was a nice, inspiring story.”

His last film, And Then We Danced – a gay love story about two male dancers – opened to polarising opinion in Georgia; critics loved it but there were many, more conservative, viewers who did not. The furore snowballed, sparking violent protests from the far right. At the country’s three sold-out screenings, protestors thronged the entrance, trying to prevent ticket holders from entering and burning LGBT+ flags outside as a statement of their dissatisfaction. 

Georgian culture is steeped in tradition and unfortunately, there are still those unwilling to leave outdated prejudices behind. It was a stressful time to say the least but the experience bolstered Akin, encouraging him to look for the good instead. “There was so much negativity with And Then We Danced when it came out in Georgia, and a lot of it was sort of this narrative of ‘Oh, it’s the older generation versus the younger generation’. That was one of the reasons I wanted to make Crossing.” 

Until being cast in this project, Mzia Arabuli, who plays Lia, had never met a trans person – as audience members, we’re very much seeing her get to know the community in real-time. “It was interesting,” Akin says. “Film and art also change our own paths. I think that’s one of the beautiful things with cinema, that it takes you on a journey. Yesterday, I was in Oxford. I’d never been there before. I met lovely people, and it’s all thanks to this film. And I think for Mzia, it’s similar. She had never met a trans person in her life and now she’s friends with so many and that’s lovely.” Needless to say, Arabuli wasn’t biased in the same way her character was.

Throughout the film, Akin intertwines multiple points of view to form one coherent narrative. The characters are vastly different, and yet, somehow very similar too. “I wanted to weave a story about patriarchy and how all of these characters are victims of the same thing. They’re all sort of traversing the same type of problems. Lia is a woman who never got married, who never had children. You can sense that she probably didn’t want to subjugate herself to a man. Then there’s Tekla and what happened to her. These people have made these choices in their lives, a lot of them against their wills because they didn’t want to shake the fragile ego of men around them. The same can be said of Achi and his brother and of Evrim. The children are also victims of capitalism, which I see as being very much connected to patriarchy.”

For much of the film, viewers are duped into thinking Evrim is actually Tekla, masquerading under a different name. This was, of course, intentional. “I wanted to keep people guessing, to keep them engaged,” Akin smiles. “To me, a good film is one that you talk about when you leave the cinema. You go home, and you sit at the kitchen table and you think, ‘What did that mean?’ Otherwise, it’s boring. Films where everything is tied together are boring to me. There’s nothing to say when you go out. There are questions that maybe I don’t even know the answer to, but that’s how it should be I think.”

Asked what he thinks the film’s resounding message is, Akin is hesitant, admitting that he rarely thinks in those terms when putting a project together. There is a message with this film though, he concedes. “I don’t think Crossing is critical of family but it’s very much a film about choosing your own people. I think the film tries to show that love relations are important. There’s a young girl in the film who says, ‘Oh, I wish our family would come looking for us’ and then the other woman jokes, ‘Oh, no that would be horrible’. But I do think there is something to that. For me, the film is very much trying to say, ‘Listen, if you have someone around you that you haven’t talked to in a while, maybe lift up the phone and tell them that you miss them’.”

Visually, the film is a masterpiece of atmosphere with Akin using Istanbul’s magical golden light to immerse viewers in a world of his creation. Born in Sweden with both Georgian and Turkish heritage, it was important to him to evoke a different side of the city. “The film is, in many ways, a love letter to Istanbul,” he agrees. 

Empathetic and emotional, Crossing is a fresh story with plenty of heart but it’s Mzia Arabuli’s quiet expressiveness that truly steals the show. 

Crossing opens in Irish cinemas on July 19. Watch the trailer below.