Film review: Crossing is a slow-burning drama of superb characterisations 

Director Levan Akin explores prejudice, poverty, gender bias, and cultural differences against a backdrop of traditional values

Lucas Kankava and Mzia Arabuli star in Crossing. Picture: MUBI

• Crossing
• ★★★★★
• Cinematic release

The unlikely pairing of the retired history schoolteacher Ms Lia (Mzia Arabuli) and the feckless teenage wastrel Achi (Lucas Kankava) travel from rural Georgia to Istanbul in Crossing (15A), hoping to track down Ms Lia’s missing niece, Tekla.

In Istanbul, they meet Evrim (Deniz Dumanli) — a woman in the final stages of transitioning who has just qualified as a lawyer — and who agrees to help.

Written and directed by Levan Akin, Crossing is a slow-burning drama of superb characterisations that takes us into the less salubrious corners of Istanbul’s shadow-world. All three main characters are given real depth as they crisscross the labyrinthine city, with Akin exploring prejudice, poverty, gender bias, and cultural differences against a backdrop of traditional values.

Debutants Lucas Kankava and Deniz Dumanli are wonderfully naturalistic, but Mzia Arabuli towers above them — both as the conservative matriarch who is belatedly forced to reconsider everything she has always believed, and not least about herself.