To a Land Unknown

Cousins Chatila and Reda have swapped Palestine for Athens, where they’re living hand to mouth with half a dozen other refugees in a broken down apartment. They’re desperate to make the next step. Germany represents the land of opportunity. But for that they need passports, and safe passage, and these things do not come cheap on the black market. Petty thefts aren’t moving the needle and Reda is falling back on drugs. But Chatila hatches an ingenious plan that might get them over the line, so long as they can pull it off…

Part crime thriller, part social issues drama, To a Land Unknown shows how dire circumstances and desperation can unravel even the surest moral compass. Writer-director Mahdi Fleifel was born in a Lebanese refugee camp, which he documented in the acclaimed 2012 film A World Not Ours. His first dramatic feature is likewise grounded in lived experience, even as it draws on familiar models. The fraught but intense bond between the cousins recalls Midnight Cowboy, Dog Day Afternoon and Mean Streets. A subplot involving a 13-year-old child and a vulnerable Greek woman (Angeliki Papoulia, from Dogtooth) kick in around the hour mark and raises the stakes considerably — but doesn’t go where you might expect. It’s a chastening film, but utterly compelling.

Crafted with tremendous empathy… This is a confident, angry, fully-realized drama.

Catherine Bray, Variety

To A Land Unknown is a tour-de-force of empathic storytelling, with its genre narrative bursting with an overabundance of humanity.

Sophie Monks Kaufman, IndieWire