Levan Akin

Levan Akin is a Swedish-Georgian gay filmmaker known for And Then We Danced (Och sedan dansar vi, 2019), which premiered at Cannes and depicted the forbidden romance between two male dancers in the Georgian National Ballet — a film whose screening was met with violent protests by Georgian nationalists and which sparked international discussion about LGBTQ+ rights in Georgia and the former Soviet states. His follow-up Crossing (2024) continued his engagement with LGBTQ+ lives in the Caucasus region. Akin has spoken about filmmaking as an act of solidarity with queer people in societies where their existence is threatened.