25/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: Mahdi Fleifel’s second feature is a migrant drama steeped in empathy, boasting an uncompromising lead performance by Mahmood Bakri

For almost a decade now, the distance between Greece and Germany has been impossible to measure without factoring in human lives, stranded family members and constant efforts to live a migrant’s life as if it was any other. Danish-Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown [+see also:
trailer
interview: Mahdi Fleifel
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Chatila and Reda have fled a refugee camp in Lebanon, having left behind Chatila’s wife and son, who call him every night to share a few moments of intimacy without thinking about borders or money. Reda has no family of his own, but he struggles with addiction: an unforgivable peril that plagues the most vulnerable, offering a promise of temporary escape. This is the one point of dispute between the cousins and their almost indestructible bond; one day, the cash they have been saving up is gone, and Reda is high again. It’s important to note that Fleifel never allows a forced narrative outcome or feigned line delivery, even when the plot’s first obstacle comes so close to a cliché. On the contrary, the film stands out with its unwavering commitment to truth, people and their real lives. Fleifel’s kind of social realism here is more authentic than many documentaries about similar themes, keeping in mind that his own documentary feature A World Not Ours [+see also:
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Fleifel wrote the script together with Fyzal Boulifa (director of Lynn + Lucy [+see also:
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interview: Fyzal Boulifa
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When Chatila comes up with an elaborate plan to recover the cash needed for their escape, the film’s pacing accelerates by the minute, as every small hitch may bring deportation or death. At that moment, a lady comes into the picture: a tipsy Greek woman with a loud laugh called Tatiana (Angeliki Papoulia). Her involvement marks both the pinnacle of hope and the beginning of a downward spiral, but it is the relationship between Reda and Chatila that fuels the film with humanistic empathy. With its authenticity and the strong lead performances by Bakri and Sabbah, To a Land Unknown has already raised the bar for films of its kind, and will remain an example of a fiction feature-length debut that is both urgent and accomplished.

To a Land Unknown is a UK-French-German-Greek-Dutch-Qatari-Saudi-Palestinian co-production staged by Inside Out Films and Nakba FilmWorks, in co-production with Salaud Morisset, Homemade Films, Studio Ruba, ZDF/ARTE & ZDF/DKF, ERΤ SA, Metafora Production and the Red Sea Fund. Salaud Morisset also handles the film’s world sales.