‘Crossing’: The Year’s Brightest, and Most Moving, Foreign Film

Languages, communities, lifestyles, borders, and values may separate us, but sadness and loneliness are universal, as is the desire to know ourselves and to find acceptance, forgiveness, and togetherness.

Crossing, writer/director Levan Akin’s film about an older Georgian woman searching for her trans niece in Turkey, understands and dramatizes that basic fact with an avalanche of empathy that’s all the more overpowering for being so gentle. Premiering in U.S. theaters on July 19 following its world premiere at February’s Berlin International Film Festival, it’s one of the year’s brightest, and most moving, imports.

In the small coastal Georgian town of Batumi, retired teacher Lia (Mzia Arabuli) arrives on the doorstep of a former student named Zaza (Levan Bochorishvili) who’s presently chastising his younger brother Achi (Lucas Kankava) for taking his car without permission. This is clearly not the first time the siblings have bickered over such matters, yet they pause their fighting long enough to invite Lia inside for a drink, over which she informs them that she’s looking for her niece Tekla, whose mother (Lia’s sister) has recently passed away.

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