Director: Levan Akın
A retired teacher's search for a missing niece pulls her from Georgia to Istanbul, where an unexpected friendship changes the shape of the journey.
What is Crossing about?
Lia has spent years carrying a promise: to find Tekla, the niece who vanished from her life after a family rupture. That promise finally pushes her out of Georgia and across the border into Istanbul, a city she barely knows and can barely navigate. There she crosses paths with Evrim, a young lawyer who works on behalf of the city's trans community, and the two form an uneasy but genuine bond as they both search the same neighborhoods for different reasons. Director Levan Akın builds the film around the texture of Istanbul itself — its ferries, back alleys, and overlooked corners — rather than around plot mechanics, letting Lia's search widen into something closer to a portrait of found family and unlikely solidarity. What begins as one woman's private mission slowly becomes a story about who gets to belong, and to whom we owe our loyalty once blood ties have already broken.
Cast & crew
Mzia Arabuli anchors the film as Lia, with Lucas Kankava, Deniz Dumanlı, Tako Kurdovanidze, Ziya Sudançıkmaz, Bünyamin Değer, Sema Sultan Elekci, and Levan Gabrichidze rounding out the ensemble across Georgia and Istanbul.
Context & significance
Crossing is a 2024 co-production spanning Denmark, France, Georgia, Sweden, and Turkey, and it carries a strong 7.5 IMDb rating for a modestly scaled drama. It follows Akın's earlier work in tracing queer and immigrant lives across shifting borders, using one woman's search as a lens onto a much larger, more layered city.
Where & how to watch
Crossing is available on K-Time once you log into a free account — the film itself costs nothing to browse and read about on the page. K-Time's Persian-language interface and Farsi subtitle and dub support let Iranian diaspora audiences follow this Georgian-Turkish story in their own language.