In the New Film “Crossing," Borders of All Kinds Make a Difference in Life and Love

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Monday, 05 August 2024 14:58

Written by Brad Balfour

Making a crossing between borders can be a lot more than just a matter of passports and visas. Witness the situation between Northern Ireland and the Republic to the south. The same is true for the crossing between the countries of Georgia and Turkey. Both are Muslim countries but when you consider the difference between a rural Georgian village and cosmopolitan Istanbul, that simple move means a lot -- especially if you’re gay or trans.

In "Crossing,” an older woman searches for her late sister's child — who is trans — who had to leave their very conservative village in Georgia for comparatively open Istanbul, Turkey. As directed by Levan Akin, the story involves not only the search for a person. but also the discovery of contrasting social and political situations.

Born in December, 1979, Swedish film director/screenwriter Akin is best known for his gay-oriented film, “And Then We Danced,” which received critical acclaim and won the 2019 Guldbagge Award for Best Film.

The 44-year-old was born and raised in Tumba, Sweden but his parents are Georgian. They moved to the Scandinavian country in the 1960s, when Georgia was one of the republics of the Soviet Union. Akin returns to Georgia every year with his sister for the summer holidays. There, he consolidates his knowledge of Georgian culture and language. 

In January 2023, it was announced that the openly gay Akin had written and directed “Crossing,” with principal photography concluding in Istanbul. It world premiered on February 15th, 2024, as part of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival’s opening Panorama. At Berlin, it received the Jury Prize from the Teddy Award jury for LGBTQ-themed films. It was then released in Sweden in March 2024. Mubi acquired distribution rights for North and Latin America, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany. The film recently made its New York debut at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival before landing in theaters in July.

This Q&A was culled from a moderated conversation in the Angelika Theater where the film is now playing.

Q: Your last film, “And Then We Danced” was The Swedish Oscar contender. It was about some very cute dancers who are coming to terms with their sexuality. It was a movie that was met with some difficulty in protests in Georgia where it takes place and where your parents are from. Was it an easier experience going into this film? 

Levan Akin: Filming “And Then We Danced” was tricky for several reasons. But one of them was obviously the subject matter. I don't think it would have been if it was just a movie about the gay guys, but it was the dance element which was [based on] tradition. With this show, we didn't have any problems like that. Not at all. We did everything that we could to do our thing filming in both Georgia and in Istanbul. They let us.

Q: You are not showing “Crossing” in Georgia. 

Levan Akin: Actually, that was mis-quoted. We were going to show it, not on the screen. But as soon as it premiered in Berlin, they started writing and making up stuff about it. They hadn't seen it, but because I made it, they were just using it as a political tool. So we decided to drop it. Now we're going to be in Sweden in November, depending on the elections in Georgia. 

Q: Probably you might feel some trepidation about screening it there, just based on the experience of Polaska.

Levan Akin: Yes, of course. However, it's a very loud minority, I would say, that scream the loudest in Georgia. I think most of Georgia is very supportive of it. 

Q: Talk about the germ of the idea for this movie. Wasn't it a true story that you heard about when you were working on “And Then We Danced”?

Levan Akin: Exactly. Actually it was during the aftermath of “And Then We Danced.” Everything in the news back then in Georgia was about queer things. There was a story about a grandfather who had never been surprised by this, but was very supportive of his granddaughter who was trans. She'd been kicked out of the household from the village where they lived, and he would go and visit her once a week.  

I thought it was a nice story. That was one of the things, but also the whole discussion about “And Then We Danced” really made this film. They're sort of in conversation with each other, because of the narrative, the discourse around it.  “And Then We Danced” was very much like, Oh, it's the old generation versus the young generation. Or it's Post-Soviet versus Soviet, where all of the older people are bigots and homophobes. That felt very polarizing. I felt like it only served the oppressors to have that sort of narrative about this topic. (A) That's not true. And (B) It would be interesting to make a movie from the perspective of a relative or someone, and how they come to terms with this. 

Q: How did you find each of your actors? You have a trio of really great ones here. The older actress, Mzia Arabuli, has some theater credits, but she comes into this movie playing retired teacher, Lia. And she seems like a veteran, trained for a long time. 

Levan Akin: She's incredible. The first time, it was very hard to cast this film. It took much longer than I've ever cast a movie. It's because we needed three leads and all of them had to be interesting. They had to be able to work together in a good way, but also they should be able to carry their own movie by themselves. That was tricky.

Then also there's a huge cast of smaller roles. All of them have to be believable with all of these things, but it's not so easy to find actors. There's not a lot of trans actors, unfortunately, in Turkey or anything like that, so it was very tricky. The actor, Deniz Dumanlı — she played the role of a lawyer who works for a Gay support-oriented NGO — was also hard to find. But when I saw her, I fell in love with her, by the way. Of course, Her face is incredible.

Q: Is it true that Mzia hadn't really ever spent time with any trans people? 

Levan Akin: Yeah, of course not. She hadn't. It's a very marginalized community in Georgia and it's very hard for them to get jobs, regular jobs. Most of them are, unfortunately, sex workers because they don't have options. It's not like something unique in every decent society. It's getting better, but a lot of Georgian women go to Turkey like in the movie to work there. We actually had a lot of people from the community in Turkey, also in the team. Mzia and Yasmin became besties. There was a nice story unfolding behind the scenes of the film, too. 

Q: It's so meta now. 

Levan Akin: It really is. I want all of my work to be for me, personally. You spend a lot of time making movies. And life is short, so I want to do things where I also learn. It has to be interesting for me to make these films. 

Q: What about the actor, Deniz Dumanli, who plays Evrim? This is her first movie? The way that you play with audience expectations where when we first meet her, we think maybe this is Tekla. She also kind of looks like Lia in a way. 

Levan Akin: Again, she's not an actress. I felt as soon as they came in front of a camera, they became actors. She's not trained as an actor or anything. But she saw an ad on Facebook, and her friend was like, “You always wanted to be an actor. You should apply.” She applied, and we called her for a very small role, but she was so good. It was like, that was in the end. And that was like two days before we started filming. It's a long story. I won't go into that. And the first scene she did was the one where she's partially naked. But she owned it. She walked in comfortably, and she was born to be on screen. 

Q: Talk about how you embedded yourself in the trans community in Istanbul. You spent a lot of time there.

Levan Akin: It was tricky because it was during the pandemic. Everything was closed. All of the spaces and rooms that I wanted to enter, I wasn't able to. That took quite some time but we did it. We started very classically. We contacted all the NGOs. Pink Life, which is in the movie and another really good NGO in Ankara. We started with that. Then I met several people that became an inspiration to the character I knew. Many of the people I met, I included in the film. Many are playing versions of themselves. A lot of the scenes are stuff that happened while I was doing research. 

Q: What about the street kids in the movie? Filmmakers find children, and it's like you go through a process where you end up suddenly with hundreds. 

Levan Akin: That's exactly what happened here. We looked, and looked, and looked. A film is everything. It tests everything. So, if it's not right, you might as well not make it. I feel it has to be right. Otherwise, it's a waste of everyone's time.

Q: The ending deceives us at first about what Tekla’s fate might be — it’s this kind of movie moment. You see there's a reconciliation. But the fact is that maybe Tekla is not actually in trouble. Maybe they] don't necessarily want to be found. Was that always the ending that you had in mind?

Levan Akin: Yeah. It came early on. I thought it was important for me to include that monologue that Mzia does at the very end, for many of us from the region and all over the world. In Turkey and Georgia, we haven't been able to have that conversation with the people around us. Just to have her ask, “What are you going to tell her if you find her?” I couldn't have Lia find her. “Maybe [she] wouldn't likeyou.”That would be cheesy, right? I was like, “I really want to hear what she would say. That's what I really want to hear.”

Q: Did you encourage Mzia and Lucas Kankava [the young villager who travels with her to help in the search] to spend time on their own, hanging out together?

Levan Akin: No, because they were also a casting lesson. Every day we were casting. I spent like two years finding new people. I had to postpone the film a bit. It was going to come out a year before but then I stopped filming, because I hadn't found the right people. Also, I felt like I hadn't been able to spend enough time with the community. I didn't really feel like I had enough with me to make a film in a way where I could stand confidently here, now, and be able to talk about it.

Q: It's also quite an international production. How many different countries were involved?

Levan Akin: It’s horrible, the whole European financing system is a nightmare, a mess. You bring in all of this money, but at the end of the day it doesn't really help you. You have to spend that money in those countries. Everything becomes more expensive and you have so many chefs. I have a main producer, and she's incredible. She also worked with me on a million ads. She's Swedish and lives there. Luckily, she guards me somehow. Everything goes through her. Otherwise, it would be a nightmare. It's hard because it's difficult financing, of course. It's always difficult. The system in Europe is very dangerous.

Q: Obviously, you've been through this gauntlet of Oscar submissions before. Given the number of countries that produce this movie, which would be the one that would submit it?

Levan Akin: It's a Swedish production company — they're the main financiers. They put in the most money.  

Q: It's fascinating how you managed to insinuate yourself into the two countries. You said you spent a lot of time there that allowed that to happen. There's a sort of a casualness that you're able to achieve, like we're really walking there. What did you do to affect this? Were there things in terms of learning the area, in terms of the lighting or other things? Writing it is different from shooting it.

Levan Akin: I love traveling. I also love to sit in a room where you can go to places and feel immersed. So, me and the DOP, we really worked with this in a way where we used a lot of long lenses and had a lot of a foreground of people in Istanbul. There was a whole camera person meandering off doing his own thing. This was also something that we talked about. I wanted the camera to feel like a third person that was with them on the trip. That was sometimes the object that would be looking at them from afar. Sometimes it was both. Also, we would hide a fountain of stuff because we couldn't afford [to pay for permission].

It was very much like people. It's like thousands of people everywhere. And it's never silent. There's always music playing. There's cats everywhere. But the thing is, we couldn't afford to have like a thousand extras, obviously. So, what we would do is that we have 40 of our own extras that are around the main actors, and then everybody else is real people, but you can't show their faces. We were on zoom lenses from the balcony. Then we would zoom in so they would be out of focus. That was kind of fun. We really liked that.

Q: What really inspired you to make this film? And how did you get it so right?

Levan Akin: Thank you. The inspiration was very much the aftermath of “And Then We Danced.” It was a conversation of like, you know, “What I was talking about before with this generational conversation?” I just felt like I'd never seen a film in that region from the perspective of an older person. 

Also, while I was shooting, we danced. I was working with some girls who were also in the movie and they suddenly said some words in Turkish. I was like, "Oh, how do you guys know Turkish?" They were like, "We go to Istanbul to work.” I was like, "Oh, okay."

I always wanted to capture a city like Istanbul. I used to go there a lot as a child. We had relatives there. We would go to Georgia and travel to Istanbul. My father was like, "I've been traveling in business and we had some business there." I used to spend time there. It was always a city that fascinated me. It’s a very transient city. It's always changing. It's very difficult to tell. It was very difficult to film in Istanbul because of the nature of the city. And, I also love Turkish music.

That's why I wanted to make this film. There were several things, but the one that was very important to me all along was to involve the community in the filming process. It was not just about having trans people in front of the camera, but also behind the camera.

For instance, our main casting person is a guy called Bulut, who is trans. He knew a lot of the people that are in the film. There were always people on set that were always talking about things. And also very much in the communication that everyone does in front of the camera. My job as a director is as an observer. I like to find specific things that make a scene feel real and lived in. I don't know how it is to actually live in Istanbul. But a lot of my work is just listening — being there observing, and then curating what I see and deciding what to begin with.

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