Levan Akin

Levan Akin

Stockholm: I was in Vardzia, Georgia, when Levan Akin’s And Then We Danced came out. The narrative follows a gay dancer navigating love in Georgia, and I watched hundreds of people protesting the film in crowds that extended from a cinema in Tbilisi down Rustaveli Avenue—led by the far right and members of the Georgian Orthodox Church—on a small television with the volume turned down low while our hosts sang traditional folk songs. The film only played for three days; the army had to be called in, and police were posted in each screening room. 

Recounting this story to Levan, the Stockholm-based, Swedish-born filmmaker of Georgian descent—whose last two films, And Then We Danced (2019), winner of 29 awards including the Gold Q-Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, and Crossing (2024), listed as a Critic’s Pick by the New York Times alongside festival wins in Bastia, Berlin, Guadalajara, and Sofia, bravely and urgently tell those Georgian narratives rarely, if ever, seen in traditional media—he could only nod. The protests were horrible, he confided, and although he told me several times that he felt and feels he will always be an outsider, when asked whether he could imagine a better future for queer people in Georgia, he unequivocally said yes.  

Endearing and intelligent, Levan’s impact on contemporary Georgian culture cannot be underestimated. His films are raw, meaningful, and unapologetically sincere, and their stories—documenting a changing Georgia, seemingly in real time—have helped to galvanise a hugely political and passionate Georgian youth who continue fighting for inclusivity and change, even as Georgia passes new legislation restricting LGBTQ+ rights across the country. 

Sitting in his Stockholm apartment drinking coffee and staring at a series of tiles by Salvador Dalí hanging above his door, Levan held his cat, Olof, and communicated from a place many are too scared to sit within, which could only be called the heart. We began by talking about our distaste for small talk. It is in this spirit that our interview begins.

Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin

Levan, given the immense weight of making a film about homosexuality in Georgia, how did you summon the courage to tell a story beautiful enough to withstand the hate or backlash that was sure to come?

I would say I was probably naïve and a little bit stupid because I didn’t understand the implications of what I was doing. Although, I think I need to start from the beginning. I have always wanted to make films, since I was very little. One of my first jobs was working for Roy Andersson, the Swedish film director. He’s incredible, and he had a little studio in the city centre. We got to do everything, and that experience was like going to film school. Then I started working for Swedish television and began directing professionally around 26 years old. By the time I was 30, I had done a lot of Swedish TV, some big shows, and I sort of thought, ‘It’s nice to be working professionally as a director, but I want more’. It wasn’t really what I had dreamt of. I wanted to tell my own stories and do things in a different way. So some friends and I went off to Gotland, which is an island where Bergman used to make his films. We made a movie together for a couple of weeks, low budget, called Katinkas Kalas, or Certain People in English. That was my first foray into doing something on my own, and it did pretty well. I mean, not in Sweden, but in America it got nice reviews, and that saved me a little. Then I did a larger-budget Swedish film called Cirkeln, or The Circle, that was based off a best-selling book series that two of my friends had written. It was a fun shoot but very difficult, and to be honest, after that I felt a little broken.  

Then in 2013, these kids tried to hold a pride parade in Georgia, and they were attacked. I saw it on the news, and I was appalled because I had this very rose-coloured idea of Georgia. I used to go there as a kid, mostly during communism, and I thought of Georgia as a safe space for everyone, which is naïve now that I look back at it. Also, my parents had known some gay people from Georgia when we were kids. In any case, I was shocked by what I saw. I didn’t think it was as bad as it was in those clips. So after I finished The Circle, I set off for Georgia. I had two ideas: Can I find my love of cinema again? And, is there a story to be told about this situation in Georgia? I think the overall idea was, had I grown up in Georgia, what would my life have looked like? I didn’t know I was going to make And Then We Danced, but I went with my Canon EOS 5D camera and walked around and met people. This was in 2016. I tried to get in touch with LGBTQ NGOs, which proved difficult. There were a few, but they didn’t really have a presence online, and everything was quite tricky. Eventually, I got an address, and I just knocked and went in. There was a very sweet queer young man from Rustavi who helped me, and I basically hired him to take me into the rooms I needed to see. I started exploring the topic when I was there, doing tons of interviews, and this story emerged. 

Incredible.

Quite early on, I decided that I wanted the narrative to have a very classical structure where you follow along with one person. I wanted the camera to be almost stuck on his shoulder, very subjective. The dance element came early too, because dance is so fascinating and such a good arena for discussing masculinity. A lot of the lines, especially in the first scenes with the dance teachers, are almost verbatim from stuff I shot when I was doing research. But to answer your question, I never at any point stopped and thought, ‘This is going to be very provocative, or people are going to be offended by this’ because I was working in my own little space. Also, because the last Swedish film had sort of broken me, I was literally on the cusp of, like, either I do another movie, or I never do a film again. And Then We Danced was basically it for me, which meant I never thought about what would happen or whether people would like it. I just wanted to make something that I liked, that I was proud of. 

Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
And Then We Danced, 2019. Photoraphy by Anka Gujabidze.
Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
And Then We Danced, 2019. Photoraphy by Anka Gujabidze.
Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
And Then We Danced, 2019. Photoraphy by Anka Gujabidze.
Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
And Then We Danced, 2019. Photoraphy by Anka Gujabidze.

And Then We Danced only played for three days in Georgia, right?

Yeah. We were trying to have the premier, and then somebody leaked a rough copy of the movie. Actually, I know who that person is. He doesn’t know that I know, but I want him to know that I know.

Do you want me to put this in?

Yeah. He probably won’t read it, but what he did was such a bitch move. He is connected to someone who is connected to someone in politics, and he did it for malicious reasons. He is also in the industry, so it could have been jealousy.

How did you feel when it leaked?

It pissed me off because they leaked a version that wasn’t the finished film, my work-in-progress. It was a link that we had shared with a few people for feedback. There are some horrible people out there. That was also one of the things when And Then We Danced came out: the amount of lying. I would read things and think, ‘This is just all made up’. I think I became more hardened after And Then We Danced, unfortunately. Success hardens you.

Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin

Can we go back to when you said you had lost your love of cinema? How did you rediscover that, and what did that process look like?

Time is so valuable. It goes so fast, and the older you get the faster it goes. I want to use my time working on projects that have a deeper meaning to me personally, that feel significant. Also, it’s important that I enjoy myself when I am writing, when I am filming, but it’s hard because eventually capitalism shows up, and I always have to recalibrate. When I did And Then We Danced, so many people told me, ‘Now you need to make an English-language movie’. But like, why? From what point of view? My agent told me the other day that if And Then We Danced had been in English, I would have had a roster to choose from for my next film. But if And Then We Danced had been in English, it wouldn’t have been And Then We Danced. It’s so funny, right? But that’s how that part of the business works. There is the idea of, how many people are watching? Oh, not many? Then it is a flop. No one really cares that it was made artistically or interestingly.  

I think that is the struggle, keeping that integrity. But I decided, no, I’m going to continue following my heart. I did that with Crossing too. That one was hard to make. It was Covid. It took a really long time. It was a messy shoot for many reasons, but in the end it became a film. It’s doing well, which is good, but what if it hadn’t done well? How would I have felt then?

No one can predict what is going to be a success and what isn’t. But doing the next film, finding the strength, somehow, even when you are exhausted—

Exactly. Because you always need to do the next one. You know, we’re sitting in my kitchen, and this is where I write and edit all my films. Sometimes, when I watch trailers of the movie, or it’s on the TV, I think, ‘It’s so odd that I just typed a bunch of things out in my kitchen and then sent it out’. But I’ve always felt like I’ve understood the power of images. Fascists, when they take over a country—they shut down propaganda because it really does have power. That was something I discovered with And Then We Danced, and that allowed me to see things differently.  

Basically, I want whatever I am working on to feel significant. I don’t want to waste four years. Even when I direct now for a salary, like the TV series Interview with the Vampire, I do it because I used to love those books. I am trying to incorporate this into everything in my life: Does this feel meaningful? Does this add value? Rather than, ‘It’s cool’, or ‘It looks good on my CV’. The work needs to be more than that. Also, I want to do things that feel earnest, because I feel there is a trend in cinema today, especially in Nordic cinema, where there’s this sort of humour, you know, awkward, Curb Your Enthusiasm-style, and I feel it has permeated a lot of storytelling. I don’t connect with the characters, or I sometimes feel that people making the stories don’t even care about the characters. And I want to care. It is hard to be earnest, because it’s easy for that to become banal. Like, ‘Oh yeah, it is difficult to be a trans woman in Georgia’. We know that. Then what? Because how do you tell these stories without becoming cliché? How do you make them personal?

Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin

How do you?

To me, thematically, Crossing deals with a lot of things that I am personally very drawn to. This idea of the intergenerational mea culpa is something that I have thought about a lot in my own life. Older generations in Georgia and Turkey—for them, homosexuality is like a disease. It’s not something you talk about. Still, in Georgia today, gay people younger than me are living double lives. Everyone knows they’re gay, but they also have a wife and a kid, and no one talks about it openly. That was something that I thought about a lot with Crossing: What if someone of that generation, who is sort of educated and open-minded—although in Georgia, it doesn’t matter, even the younger generation can be super homophobic—what if this character is totally cornered and has to face it? What happens then? In the beginning, when Lia is searching for Tekla, it feels more like something she has to do, rather than something she is doing from a place of love or warmth, although that’s eventually where she ends up. That journey, especially to audiences from this part of the world, is very powerful. A lot of us have never been able to have that conversation, imaginary or otherwise, that Lia has with Tekla. Maybe from a Western perspective, people don’t understand how significant it is to be told that you are loved no matter what. But I love this woman, Lia, and she had a very interesting journey herself with this film. At the start, she was like, ‘I’m not homophobic, but just don’t flaunt it on the streets’. Then at the end, when we were having our wrap party, she was basically a gay icon. 

Like, ‘Gay people are great!’

Yeah! Like, ‘I love them!’ It was very funny, and she was very sweet.

How did you find her?

Oh, my god. That whole process of casting the movie was a nightmare. I needed to find three major roles that all had to be able to carry a film themselves. We had several different candidates that we were workshopping at the same time in different constellations. I don’t think people understand how hard it is to find the right cast for a film, and how important. If they are not 100 percent right, the whole film will fail. Both with Lucas, who plays Achi, and Deniz, who plays Evrim, the Turkish woman, they had never acted. They were just people we found. I love that—finding people that can inhabit a role and add texture to it. You write something because you have an idea, but then you find people and they have their own energy and tone, and you’re like, ‘Oh, my god, this adds so much to the character’. That’s the fun part in making the films I make, because I can do that. If I start making more regular films, I’ll sort of lose that autonomy, and that would be sad, I think.

Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
Crossing, 2024. Photography by Haydar Tastan.
Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
Crossing, 2024. Photography by Haydar Tastan.
Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
Crossing, 2024. Photography by Haydar Tastan.
Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
Crossing, 2024. Photography by Haydar Tastan.
Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
Crossing, 2024. Photography by Haydar Tastan.
Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
Crossing, 2024. Photography by Haydar Tastan.

What I loved about Crossing was the way it almost eliminates borders, bringing people from Georgia and Turkey together. I think, moreover, what I love about your films is their uncompromising search for connection. Where do you think your desire to become a storyteller comes from?

I think I am trying to put my own existence into context. Although in the beginning, it was very basic. As a kid, I loved reading. I loved stories. My father had old Charlie Chaplin movies on VHS and some old Georgian movies in black and white, like Bashi-Achuki, which is about a Georgian Robin Hood character. We used to watch that over and over. Actually, now that I think about Charlie Chaplin and his whole humanism thing, maybe I am more inspired by him than I realise, because his films are all about solidarity and people helping each other. In any case, very early, I began filming my friends, and we used to do skits. Some were quite hilarious.

On VHS?

Yeah, with a camcorder. We would build these elaborate sets and do puppet shows. Very intricate. At school every Friday, we had a talent show, and I used to take over and do plays and direct everybody. I was very serious and strict; I would tell people they had to be on time. I was crazy, but very ambitious with storytelling. I think it’s always been something that I have wanted to do. I guess it’s also a way of protecting yourself. When you tell stories about other people, people don’t ask you so much about yourself. It was a way of hiding, which in many ways I think I have stopped doing. I wanted to put myself into the story.

Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin

Your films, while critiquing a part of Georgia, come from a place of love. They show Georgia as fallible, but ultimately in a tender light. Do you think your distance from the country allowed you to comment on Georgian culture in a unique and more uncompromising way?

Probably. I mean, I always have an outsider eye with everything I do, even here in Sweden. I was born in Sweden but spoke Georgian as a kid at home. I went to English school because my parents thought it would be good for the future, and on the playground I spoke Swedish. Then we used to spend the summer in Turkey and Georgia. It was a very diverse childhood. I mean, I went to Young Pioneer camps in Georgia in the ‘80s for a month, singing songs to the glory of Lenin, and the other half of summer I was in Istanbul and Ayancik, which is by the Black Sea, where it’s ultra-capitalist. What I want to say is that I always have an outsider view. That’s why I love going into new cultures, rooms, and places. Catching small details, like the salted caramel thing in And Then We Danced. In Georgia, they didn’t have salted caramel, and all the kids were talking about it. Also, English cigarettes. I loved that because specificity builds a story. You ground people by creating worlds and spaces that feel real.

Could you talk about your writing process?

I never set out to write. I always wanted to be a director. But when you’re an up-and-coming director, no one is going to give you anything good. So I was like, ‘Fuck it, I’ll do it myself’. I wrote some TV shows and movies and even won some awards for my writing, but I never set out to be a writer. I am writing what I want to direct. It is very practical. I just sit down, and then pretty quickly, I can have a first draft.

How quickly?

Like two days.

Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin

Two days! For a feature?

Yeah. I mean, I have an idea, I do research, it grows, but when it comes time to write, I can do it very fast. It is not going to be a good first draft, but at least it’s something for me to hold that I can make better. I know the first draft for a lot of people is difficult, but for me, writing a script is simply necessary. Sometimes my body conks out, but then I just take a five-minute break and tell myself to keep writing. Even if it goes slowly, even if it is shit, I just keep going. And sometimes, it is fun. Sometimes, when you go back, you realise it’s not actually that bad.

The apartment where you live and write is beautiful. How did it get so decorated with cat apparel?

The space you have is a reflection of who and where you are in life. In Sweden, it can be very cold and dreary. We tend to be very decorative. I am away from home so much, filming in other cities, and I like a space where I can block out the horrors of the world. Cats help with that. I think I love cats most of all in the world. They’re so freaky and adorable, like a cartoon character. Sometimes I want to make a movie about my cat because Olof is so expressive, but it is going to be so sad when Olof eventually goes to the other side. I won’t be able to make a movie about him because it will be too painful for me. Everything I do is just to keep Olof healthy and alive for as long as possible. Doctors appointments, check-ups, pills, special food for his kidneys. Everything is for Olof.   

By the way, you’ve heard of Lev Nussimbaum, right?

No!

He’s incredible. I want to make a movie about him—I don’t know how or when. But there’s a very famous book called Ali and Nino written by Kurban Said.

Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin

I’ve seen it in bookshops in Tbilisi. I need to read it.

You do! Kurban Said is a pseudonym; the Azerbaijanis said he was an Azerbaijani writer, and there was an article in the New Yorker years ago where this guy, Tom Reiss, tried to find out the real identity of Kurban Said. It became this mysterious, amazing story. He finds out that Kurban Said is actually Lev Nussimbaum, who was born on the train between Baku and Tbilisi—very dramatic circumstances—at the turn of the last century. His father was an Azerbaijani oil baron, and his mother was a Russian Jew who was an undercover Bolshevik. She married his father to sort of take him out, and she was cooperating with Stalin before Stalin became Stalin. So Stalin lived in her house and slept over, and when Lev Nussimbaum was six years old, the father learnt about the mother, and the mother swallowed acid and killed herself. Lev Nussimbaum was Jewish, although back then Jews and Muslims were much tighter, culturally, before Israel. So he was an Orientalist, and he wanted to be a Muslim. He started writing Ali and Nino, and then he sort of presented himself as this Azerbaijani prince. Of course, he wasn’t, and when the Bolsheviks took over, he and his father left everything and had to flee Azerbaijan. They settled in Berlin, literally five years before the Nazis took over. The father died in Auschwitz, and Lev Nussimbaum died from a rare blood disease aged 38 or something in Italy. So many people had claimed to write Ali and Nino, but Reiss uncovered the true person.

Holy hell. Wild. Levan, returning to present-day Georgia, the new laws aimed at depriving queer people of their rights are terrifying. The other day I read a headline in Le Monde that said, ‘In Georgia, LGBT people are the government’s new scapegoat: “It’s persecution on a massive scale”’. There’s a huge fear, especially with the coming election, that Georgia is reverting back to Russian politics. At the same time, I’ve had conversations with people who live in Georgia and align with the church who are scared that the new generation want to forget the old Georgia entirely, that they’ll lose the very traditions that make Georgia special. I wanted to know how you navigate those conversations?

What I don’t understand about that argument—frankly, it provokes me, because it’s the same one that the Swedish Democrats use, saying we have to go back to our roots—is that culture is always evolving. It’s everchanging. In the last few years in Georgia, they have started experimenting with food. They’re like, ‘Oh, a khinkali can have stuff in it other than meat or mushroom’, whereas before, that was unheard of. I know a Georgian chef who made a version of a khinkali for a party, and the host of the party refused to present the dish because it wasn’t traditional. That was in 2016. Once, I ordered lobio kotanshi and potatoes because I wanted to eat them together, and people around me asked what I was doing. They were like, ‘You don’t eat that together, you eat that with cornbread’. There is a rigidity to Georgia, and I understand—I mean, they have been attacked so much. That’s what they always say; they say the Turks tried to take over. Yes, but they also left their traces, and so did Iran. That’s what culture is. I mean, khinkali is probably Mongolian. Everybody loves borscht, but where did that come from? I am talking about food, but food is inherited culture. To me, that’s what And Then We Danced was about. Here is this kid, probably a proxy for myself, who loves Georgian dance, loves Georgian culture, loves Georgian tradition, but can’t find a space in it because he is being told he cannot be who he is and be Georgian. He does his dance, but he does his own interpretation of it, and what’s wrong with that? Let him. Who the fuck cares? There’s always going to be people who will champion the old way of doing things, but I want Georgia to be a place that is inclusive for everyone. I refuse to accept that argument.

Thank you, Levan. I agree completely. Have you had any trouble in Georgia? Do people know who you are?

People know who I am, but I’ve had no trouble. I think I have been—I don’t know if lucky is the word, but I have also been given a lot of love from Georgia, especially from the younger people. And Then We Danced really did impact a generation of kids, which is weird and somehow hard to take in.  

When we premiered Crossing in Berlin and had several screenings and Q&As, that was the first time I actually met Georgians who were 16, 17, 18, figuring out their lives when that movie came out. They all have memories, just like you described, of when that movie premiered and the demonstrations and how they went and saw the film. There was a line of kids at the Q&A who wanted to share their stories and talk to me, and that was really weird because I feel quite isolated from that part of And Then We Danced. I finished the shoot in December 2018, came home to Sweden, edited it with Simon Carlgren over December and January and February, and then it came out at Cannes in May. It all went very fast, and then the protests happened in Georgia. We were in LA doing the Oscar campaign for the movie. Then I went to Sundance with the film, and Covid happened. As soon as I came home, everything shut down. I never had an audience experience except for people writing to me on Instagram, but that didn’t happen too much either. Meeting those Georgians—many of whom were just like the character in the film, who had fled from Georgia to Berlin because they’re gay—was a very ‘wow’ experience. But mostly, it is just me, writing my movies at home with my cat, Olof, who I love most in the whole world.  

Apartamento Magazine - Levan Akin
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