To A Land Unknown

Cousins Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and Reda (Aram Sabbah) plan to open a café in Germany. For now, it’s a mirage they conjure up while begging, borrowing and grifting their way through the streets of Athens to raise money for fake passports, having fled Palestine. But when Reda loses their stash to his drug addiction, it barrels them towards a knife-edge scheme to make one big score and get out while the getting’s good.

Director Fleifel has been a powerful chronicler of Palestinian lives in documentaries A World Not Ours and his brilliant short I Signed the Petition. He brings the same authenticity and specificity to his first fiction feature, co-scripted with Jason McColgan and Fyzal Boulifa. Painting refugees as neither victims, martyrs nor saints, To A Land Unknown is a powerful exercise in wringing extreme tension from the most human of stakes: to live in safety, to bring comfort to ourselves and our families. Standing comparison to Bicycle Thieves and Midnight Cowboy, this is a modern neorealist tale that captures the lives of refugees with a humane and honest eye.