Stéphane Bouquet, a friend and colleague of French director Sébastien Lifshitz, never knew his father: an American soldier in the French-based NATO forces who left without knowing he had sired a child. Thirty-three years later Bouquet and Lifschitz embark on a journey to America in which the quest for the imagined father becomes the basis for the son’s increasingly internal reality. Along the way, Lifshitz’s film becomes a road movie—suspended somewhere between documentary and fiction—where we encounter the mythic America itself as a succession of deserted downtowns, abandoned houses, and roadkill. The Crossing received its world premiere at the Director’s Fortnight at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival; it’s director, Sébastien Lifshitz, is a protégé of French filmmaker Claire Denis.