The Crossing | Kavsak by Selim Demirdelen (2010)

The Crossing | Kavsak
Turkey, 2010, 95 Minutes
Genre/Subjects: Drama, Family Issues


DIRECTOR: Selim Demirdelen
Producer: Turker Korkmaz
Screenwriter: Selim Demirdelen
Cinematographer: Aydin Sarioglu
Principal Cast: Güven Kirac, Sezin Akbasogullari

The hero of Turkish writer/director Selim Demirdelen's psychological drama is a painfully shy middle-aged accountant named Güven (Güven Kirac), who measures out his life in equal portions of work and family: the highlight of each weekday seems to be an afternoon phone call from his small daughter, assuring her father that she's home safe from school. But Güven has a secret, we soon learn: he has no daughter, no wife, no family at all. In the wake of tragedy, this bulky, quiet man in a buttoned-up cardigan has constructed an elaborate domestic fantasy to help him cope.

Demirdelen enriches this portrait of loneliness with those of two of Güven's co-workers, a prickly young man named Haydar (Umut Kurt) and a struggling young mother, Arzu (Sezin Akbasogullari), recently separated from her alcoholic husband. Then there’s Güven’s explosive upstairs neighbor, Vedat (Cengiz Bozkurt), who torments his wife, daughter and ancient mother with screaming rants.

Set alternately in the stifling accountancy office, the dark, rainy streets of Istanbul and the bleak hospital where the various traumas of its characters are revealed, The Crossing is a compelling examination of an ordinary man's extraordinary capacity for sacrifice and of the mysterious ties that bind us. Güven Kirac's performance as the anonymous Everyman is beautifully detailed down to the smallest gesture of bewilderment or despair.
—Bill Gallo