Critic Reviews

Compassionate and original, Crossing is an odd couple road movie about friendship and acceptance of differences that demonstrates rather than preaches its theme.

Akin’s film draws connections to suggest that maybe through these crossings, we begin to understand each other.

In this town, in this movie, you feel absolutely certain each face has its own fascinating story to tell.

Akin doesn’t untangle his main character’s inner life; rather, he simply recognizes that healing is a process that both begins with oneself and is aided by those we allow into our lives and hearts.

Following on from Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, Crossing gifts us the second essential Georgian screen heroine of 2024.

Akin is here working in a tradition established in Italian Neo-realism — and by the end of the film, he shows he can turn on the viewer’s tear ducts as deftly as De Sica did in his prime — but his narrative approach brings a vivid freshness to the proceedings.

Akin’s approach feels so tied to novel-writing — with shifts in perspectives and at least one plot-twisting formal deceit that whiplashes you only to leave you breathless and a bit swoony — and yet the axis around which his universe orbits is entirely cinematic, and universal.

Perhaps a bit predictably, Crossing emphasizes the importance of forging new connections rather than holding onto relationships that may no longer serve us. However, its dramatic conclusion still manages to forgo cliched expectations and cater instead to the limitless possibilities that abound in an urban sprawl.

Observed with granular detail and imbued with a pulsing sense of place, this novelistic drama takes time to connect its central triangle but does so with a suppleness and restraint that amplify the emotional rewards of its lovely open-ended conclusion.

It’s seductive, fragmented, involving.