By Miruna Tiberiu
Following his breakthrough feature And Then We Danced (2019), which tells the story of first queer love through the rhythms of Georgian dance, Swedish-Georgian writer-director Levan Akin returns with his next cinematic tale. In Crossing (2024), Akin plunges his viewer into the metaphorical backseat of his protagonists – unlikely duo Lia and Achi – as they journey to Istanbul in search of Tekla, a trans woman who may not want to be found. GAY45’s Editor-in-Chief Miruna Tiberiu sits down with Akin to discuss communication through music and dance, the coexistence of pain and hope, and the process of peeling back the layers of Istanbul one at a time to feel the hot vapour of freshly-brewed tea, walk through fragmentary conversations, and experience places unknown.
Levan Akin. Image courtesy of MUBI.
Miruna Tiberiu: I’d like to start us off with talking about space and atmosphere in the film. I remember watching Crossing for the first time and being struck by how complete this sensory experience felt for the viewer. Why did you seek to build such a complete atmosphere within your film’s spaces? What was the importance of shooting in Batumi and Istanbul for yourself and for the story you chose to tell?
Levan Akin: I love film, and I love discovering new spaces. I want to share those spaces with the viewers, so a lot of the spaces that you see in the film are either recreations of spaces that I’ve been in or real spaces that we alter slightly. I’ve always been interested in rooms, and how people interact with and inhabit [them]. [At the end of] Crossing, for instance, Lia gets to experience her idea of a room; that space we actually created from scratch. I’m very inspired by neorealism, I want it to feel very immersive. That’s what I’m most excited about with film: being able to go to places and to capture places and people that you wouldn’t otherwise see in your life. So, in that way, I feel that film can really transcend cultures and borders, because within these spaces you can still find an alikeness with people, commonalities.
Achi (Lucas Kankava) and Lia (Mzia Arabuli) on the ferry in Istanbul. Still from Crossing (2024) dir. Levan Akin. Courtesy of the artist and MUBI.
MT: This made me think of the way in which you frame Lia discovering the neighbourhood where the film’s trans community has been flourishing and finding a family in each other. The camera follows her gaze as she looks up, observing very deeply. The neighbourhood that you took inspiration from is currently facing danger, police brutality and forced eviction, as has been the case ever since trans communities started moving there. How did you go about researching within these communities, meeting and talking to people whose lives are reflected on screen in your film? Did you face any ethical challenges, perhaps that’s not the right phrasing…
LA: Actually, I think it is the correct phrase, because inadvertently what happens when you make documentaries or meet real people and want to tell [their] stories is that you draw inspiration [from them]. When I was researching for the film, it was during lockdown, so it was very difficult for me to actually access these streets and communities. I had to spend quite some time talking to people over Zoom. I had a production company or a researcher in Turkey and Georgia who contacted various LGBTQIA+ organisations, for instance Pink Life in the film, which is a real NGO. Then, I meet them and interview them, and through them I meet maybe one person who works in this field, who is, for example, like Evrim’s character in the film a human rights lawyer, and meet more people, conduct interviews, and so on. It was important for us to provide not just superficial representation in front of the camera. We had people from the LGBTQIA+ community working behind the camera. We also had courses for the team about the film’s topics so that everyone knew how to interact with everyone in a way that was safe, to create a safe space.
Lia (Mzia Arabuli) dancing on the streets of Istanbul by night. Still from Crossing (2024) dir. Levan Akin. Courtesy of the artist and MUBI.
MT: I’d like to move on to music now, which I feel relates to space; music and space become intertwined in your film, especially when it comes to making that move from Georgia to Turkey as the characters do. Your song choice in the film feels like a language in itself; you transform sweeping romantic ballads about love and loss into a manifestation of queer family relationships and the regrets that haunt Lia throughout the film. The lyrics, too, feel very important. Can you tell me a little more about your ideas behind your music choice and the ways in which music functions in your film?
LA: I tend to always play songs when I’m writing and doing research, and sometimes they go on loop; I can listen to something like 500 times, it gets me into the right flow and the right atmosphere. Some of those songs end up in the film, though a lot of them don’t. With this film, each song is meticulously picked; the last song in the film, for instance, is by Tülay German, who is a Turkish singer who ended up having to leave Turkey and live in France, so she sings in French. It’s very much a parallel to Tekla, who couldn’t live in her country. The first Turkish song you hear in the film is called Yolcu, it means traveller. You can be a traveller in many ways, it’s not just about going on the road. So, I think a lot of the songs have a significance to me and to the story. There was also another song that I listened to a lot whilst I was working [on the film] that didn’t end up in it, it was Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen. Sometimes it’s just a flow or rhythm in a song; that one has the atmosphere of the film, that song and Crossing are like this [crosses his fingers].
MT: It’s very much a road trip song!
LA: It’s very much a road trip song.
MT: I also got the impression that music in Crossing acts as this sort of merging of tradition and modernity beyond the barriers of gender, sexuality, language, country. I think that’s especially powerful given how often right-wing supporters co-opt traditional culture, song and dance, as nationalist symbols to dictate who can belong to a nation or not, who can engage with culture or not. Did you feel this reclamation at work?
LA: Definitely, this is exactly why I made And Then We Danced, those exact words you just said. [I felt] anger and I wanted to reclaim it as a ‘you can be whoever you want to be and love your traditions, you can’t co-opt my traditions, they’re mine as much as yours!’ I think that’s a lot of what these films have in them. As well as the lines and bonds that are severed because of patriarchy, like in this film. It’s so tragic that Tekla wasn’t able to spend her life with her aunt and her mum [in Georgia], it’s horrible, for what? So that we can protect the fragile masculinity of these men? It makes me so angry, I’m so tired of it.
Achi (Lucas Kankava) on the ferry, extending his body so that he is almost dancing. Still from Crossing (2024) dir. Levan Akin. Courtesy of the artist and MUBI.
MT: I understand the feeling. At the same time, Crossing does a really good job at balancing this exploration of suffering, intolerance, pain, with an exploration of found families. I work a lot with Romanian cinema, and I find it rare to see a queer film set in this environment and area that doesn’t focus solely on suffering. The end of Crossing to me, in particular, felt very hopeful. Why did you choose to focus on love, kindness and community-building?
LA: Because I miss it. And because I see it a lot in this community. I think this film and And Then We Danced are very much a reflection of something I want to see more of in film, and around us in general. We live in a very divisive and dark time in human history. I don’t know if we’re ever going to overcome these days, everything feels very dystopian right now. So [I’m drawn to] people just helping each other, like someone zipping somebody up because they’re going to be cold, those small moments and acts of kindness. I’m tired of cynical cinema, I’m tired of irony. I want to be earnest. I think it’s so difficult to be earnest nowadays and to balance that without becoming too saccharine, and that’s something I want to keep exploring in my films.
MT: I felt this in the way you explored Lia and Achi’s relationship which is built on this unconditional kindness. I especially love the dance scene at the end where Lia and Achi lock eyes and dance together with Evrim and everyone else. What was it like filming this dance scene? Was there any choreography involved?
LA: There was supposed to be choreography in that scene, but like many things about making a film, you have to stay flexible. We made it work in the end. It had another layer originally: I’ve seen a specific dance in the Black Sea by these super macho men who move their hips so femininely and I really wanted to capture that, but we weren’t able to. The other layer [of this scene] was Achi and Lia acknowledging each other and reconciling with each other as well as with the fact that they may never find Tekla, but that’s ok. So, I still have that dance to show in another film. Both with Crossing and And Then We Danced, some people tell me that there’s too much music in my films. I don’t care, I want more! I also love communication through movement and how people can talk to each other without words. I think that scene in Crossing really encapsulates that for me. They could just sit and talk about things, but I’d rather they just dance…
Achi (Lucas Kankava) and Lia (Mzia Arabuli), wordlessly close. Still from Crossing (2024) dir. Levan Akin. Courtesy of artist and MUBI.
MT: On the note of endings, how do you conceive of Lia’s journey throughout the film?
LA: She’s a woman who in many ways has nothing to lose; she’s like a character in a Western film, out to take vengeance. You can see by the way she moves there by the water [in the film’s opening] that she is a woman on a mission. But then, as she’s doing the mission, she discovers life again through this super naïve kid. And I love that combination between old and young, the energy of young people who think everything is possible and the world is amazing, whereas Lia thinks the world is horrible. I think that by the end of the film she still thinks it’s a horrible world, but she’s more ok with living in it and finding her space in it. I didn’t want it to feel like she goes on this huge journey and suddenly becomes a really warm lady or takes care of him and becomes a motherly figure. There are elements of that, but I didn’t want to reduce a woman to that role alone. I think she becomes one in his eyes, but I don’t feel it from her, not in that way. They’re more like equals. It’s also something I very much spoke about to Mzia, who plays Lia. She’s fantastic, she had the right level of everything.
MT: And the last sequence when she’s on the ferry going back to Batumi, it feels hopeful, it feels cathartic, like she’s come out the other way, and for the first time I can sense some “future-orientedness” in her eyes.
LA: Yes! Me too, me too. And I love how the wind flows in her coat like that, she’s almost like a superhero.
MT: As the camera pans out… I have one last question, since we’ve been talking about travel and spaces. What’s your favourite road movie?
LA: Oh, good question. Thelma and Louise (1991). And also Y tu mamá también (2001), I think that’s my favourite actually; it’s a film I think about often. I think, what if one time in my life I could make something as good…
Crossing is released in cinemas on July 18th (DE) and July 19th (US, UK), and on MUBI on August 30th. To read more about the film, read Miruna Tiberiu’s review.
Miruna Tiberiu is the Editor-in-Chief of GAY45. She is a postgraduate in Film Studies at Cambridge University. Tiberiu has written for numerous publications, including The Cambridge Review of Books and the Cambridge Language Collective. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Cambridge’s first all-queer magazine, Screeve. She was nominated for the International News Media Association (INMA)’s “30 Under 30” Awards in 2023.
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