Crossing

Director: Levan Akin

6 June 2024

See

“The Georgian and Turkish languages are gender neutral” the film’s title begins, but the conservative cultures are not so accepting. This is another tender Georgian LGBT story told by writer director Levan Akin about Lia (Maia Arabuli) the aunt of trans girl Tekla who was run off by her family and fled to Istanbul. Her sister’s dying wish was to bring her daughter home, and Lia sets off to Turkey with the help of Tekla’s friend Ach (Lucas Kankavai). He too wants to get out of Batumi and becomes Lia’s hapless translator and guide.

Think

“Istanbul is a place where people come to disappear,”Following on from showing Bassiani in And Then We Danced, Akin does club/party scenes like no other, they pulsate and reverberate with an atmosphere that makes you want to be there. That’s how Achi stumbles upon the community of transwomen in Istanbul and their NGO support structures. It’s less an underground scene and more a peer support network, if you’re actually active in a subculture then somebody will know you, and trans women see the good intentions of Lia and Ach with the logic, “what if our family came looking for us? She has a right to know.” Evrim (Deniz Dumanli) is the third protagonist, a Turkish T girl, a lawyer, lover and good person making her way. Like all of us. Helping others get there too, unlike all of us. 

Feel

This is the first time I’ve felt the ASMR of catharsis since Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. The sensation tingled across my forearms and shins at the film's climax. Which reminded me of Denis Villenue’s Incendies. But I would not spoil the conclusion so you, dear reader, have the chance to view it, and hopefully feel it too.