TO A LAND UNKNOWN Discovery

One of the year’s must-see narrative debuts which premiered at Cannes, Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel’s (A WORLD NOT OURS) visceral and timely thriller is set among a group of Palestinian refugees in Greece. Cousins Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and Reda (Aram Sabbah) are stranded in a squat in Athens after fleeing a camp in Lebanon where their families remain. Living hand-to-mouth and eking out an existence in the shadows by hustling, begging, borrowing and stealing, the pair are ready to do almost anything to save up enough money to get to Germany, where Chatila dreams of opening a café and Reda imagines finally being free of his crippling drug addiction. Their liminal existence is given fresh purpose and added complications with the arrival of an orphaned Palestinian boy, alone and desperate to get to Italy where his aunt awaits. Propelled by empathy, but also sensing an opportunity, the cousins embark on a series of schemes to make it to their new life on the other side of the German border, gradually ramping up the seriousness of the crimes they’re willing to commit in the process. While this is a tale about the dehumanizing effects of being deprived of a place to call home — and the desperation that ensues — Fleifel skillfully maintains the core humanity of his characters, offering a deeply empathetic portrait of friendship and brotherhood, even in the darkest of moments. –Abbie Algar