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
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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
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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