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To a Land Unknown To a Land Unknown

Mahdi Fleifel / Greece, Saudi Arabia, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Palestine, Qatar / 2024 / 105 min

A compelling, uncompromising look at the living conditions of migrants in the urban jungle of a European metropolis.

cast Mahmood Bakri (Čatila/Chatila), Aram Sabbagh (Reda), Mohammad Alsurafa (Malik), Angeliki Papoulia (Tatiana), Mouataz Alshalton (Abu Love), Mohammad Ghassan (Jaser/Yasser), Monzer Reyahnah (Marwan)

IMDb

After fleeing a camp in Lebanon, two Palestinian cousins, Chatila and Reda, are stranded in Athens, living in an underground limbo. Chatila is the level-headed, firm counterpart to Reda, whose battles with drug addiction challenge their attempt to make their way west, further into Europe. Their lives intersect with an array of dynamic sidekicks, the drug-dealer-turned-poet Abu Love, or the young boy whom they ultimately traffic out of Athens with the help of a local woman. Caught in an uncontrollable spiral, they are forced to embrace the destiny of other invisibles roaming the streets of this metropolis.

“I always try to use literary references. From the get-go, I thought that this is Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani. He wrote about these guys, three men who leave the camps in Lebanon to go and work in the Gulf, which was kind of the promised land, and they ended up being stuck in the desert between Iraq and Kuwait at the mercy of the smugglers. So when I arrived in Athens, I was like, Oh my God, the story hasn't changed, it’s just different. Now the desert is Athens, this urban desert that they're stuck in, this purgatory.” (Mahdi Fleifel)

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