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To a Land Unknown film image; two men sat on bench with skateboard

To a Land Unknown

Panorama

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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

Director
Cast

Mahmood Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Angeliki Papoulia, Mohammad Alsurafa, Monzer Reyahnah, Mouataz Alshaltouh

Credits
Country of Origin

UK/Germany/France/
Greece/Netherlands

Year

2024

Language

In Greek, Arabic and English with English subtitles

Film Contact
18+

At International Village

19+

At Fifth Avenue and The Rio

106 min
Action & Suspense Award Winners Human Rights & Social Justice
Nakba FilmWorks, Inside Out Films

Book Tickets

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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 headshot; To a Land Unknown director

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

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