Cousins Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and Reda (Aram Sabbah), two Palestinian refugees stranded in Athens, turn to purse-snatching, shoplifting, and sex work to scrounge up funds for the fake passports they need to move their family to Germany. When Reda loses their savings to a heroin addiction relapse, Chatila devises a risky human smuggling scheme to make up the funds. The cousins soon find themselves on a slippery slope of moral compromise as they resort to taking three Syrian men hostage.
This outstanding crime thriller marks the narrative feature debut of documentarian Mahdi Fleifel (A World Not Ours). Cinematographer Thodoros Mihopoulos’ 16mm shots of Athens’ backstreets set the melancholy stage for the film’s excellent leads, Aram Sabbah, who embodies a boyish vulnerability as Reda, and Mahmood Bakri, who oscillates masterfully between tenderness and calculated bursts of intimidation. A heart-wrenching portrait of two wayward men desperate for the home they can’t return to, To A Land Unknown casts an unflinching eye on the trauma of Palestinian exile.
CineCoPro Award, Munich 2024
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
Community Partner
Mahmood Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Angeliki Papoulia, Mohammad Alsurafa, Monzer Reyahnah, Mouataz Alshaltouh
UK/Germany/France/
Greece/Netherlands
2024
In Greek, Arabic and English with English subtitles
At International Village
At Fifth Avenue and The Rio
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Sawsan Asfari, Frank Barat, Francois de Villers, Elisa van Waeyenberge
Producer
Geoff Arbourne
Screenwriter
Fyzal Boulifa, Mahdi Fleifel, Jason McColgan
Cinematography
Thodoris Mihopoulos
Editor
Halim Sabbagh
Original Music
Nadah El Shazly
Art Director
Ioanna Soulele
Mahdi Fleifel
Mahdi Fleifel is a Palestinian-Danish director who graduated from the National Film and Television School in the UK. He was notably mentored by Stephen Frears and Pawel Pawlikowski. In 2012, his first feature-length documentary A World Not Ours premiered at TIFF and gathered around thirty awards (Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Yamagata, DOC NYC). He took part in the Cinéfondation in 2013, and subsequently directed several short films: A Man Returned (Silver Bear 2016, EFA nomination), A Drowning Man (Cannes 2017, BAFTA nomination), I Signed the Petition (IDFA Award 2018, EFA nomination). To a Land Unknown is his first feature narrative film.
Filmography: A World Not Ours (2012)
Photo by Ulysse del Drago
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Other Side of Hope
Khaled, a Syrian (Sherwan Haji), washes up on Finland's glum shores and becomes an unlikely friend to a middle-aged Finnish shirt salesman (Sakari Kuosmanen) in the midst of remaking his life. Compassionate and wryly funny by turns.
Silent Friend
In this entrancing reverie from On Body and Soul director Ildikó Enyedi, we are invited to contemplate several human specimens from the vantage point of a mighty Ginkgo biloba tree on the grounds of a German university.
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
Miles Davis 100! Elevator to the Gallows + Julian Borkowski
24-year-old Louis Malle came out of the gate with this cool noir about a perfect murder that goes horribly wrong. A man (Maurice Ronet) kills his boss in his office, only to get stuck in the lift... Meanwhile his lover (Jeanne Moreau) is going frantic.