NZIFF: Crossing

An aging aunt must voyage from her rugged Georgian home to cosmopolitan Istanbul in search of an estranged trans niece in this graceful cross-cultural panorama from Levan Akin.

Retired history teacher Lia (Mzia Arabuli) made a deathbed promise to her sister: to track down her niece who, years earlier, was chased from her home thanks to smalltown transphobia. Stoic and determined, Lia follows a lead down the Georgian shoreline and meets impish teen Achi (Lucas Kankava), who claims to have knowledge of the niece’s whereabouts and offers to help with the search as a means to escape his own parochial prison.

Together the mismatched pair stumble through language barriers and culture clashes as they explore the back alleys of Istanbul. The story unwinds in an unhurried, dreamy fashion, eventually bringing the unlikely sleuths into the orbit of Everim (Deniz Dumanl), a streetwise trans woman in the final stages of securing both her new female ID documents and licence to practise law. The trio provide distinct views of the vibrant cobblestoned city, beautifully filtered through lenses of loneliness, regret, and joy.

Akin steers the story through familiar odd couple beats on a warm, empathic voyage through Georgian and Turkish culture, exploring thorny political and identity issues with tender and naturalistic restraint. With knockout performances from all three leads, viewers will fall for each character's prickly charms – Achi’s brash kindness, Lia’s taciturn loyalty, Everim’s resilient joy – as they drift through the seductive city, its crowded historical majesty shot with languorous finesse.

Crossing is a sweetly sad elegy of connection across geographic and social borders, shaped by a filmmaker eager to explore specificities of time and place, teasing out the crucial threads of dignity that bind us together. — Adrian Hatwell