Written by Kianna Best on May 24, 2024. Posted in Awards and Festivals / Production News

To A Land Unknown premieres at Cannes

Mahdi Fleifel directed To A Land Unknown made its debut at the Festival de Cannes during the Director's Fortnight. The film follows the journey of two Palestinian cousins, stranded in Athens desperate to emigrate to Germany for a better life and to open a cafe. The film shot on location in Athens, Greece.

To A Land Unknown is a the story of Chatila, played by Mahmood Bakri, the responsible married father taking the reins of the journey, and his cousin Reda, played by Aram Sabbah, a recovering drug addict. Dreaming of opening a café, the young men face many moments of struggle in their attempt to emigrate from Greece to Germany. The heart wrenching story captures the hardships of the process as well as the many unsavoury means of paying for their travel documents.

Filming for the project took place in Athens, capturing a side of the city unlike what tourist brochures or idyllic features tend to focus on. Matching the gritty energy of Chatila and Reda’s experience, the backdrops are covered in dirt, creating shadows for many atrocities to take place, all emphasized by the 16 mm photography of Thodoris Mihopoulos. The Inside Out Films and Nakba Filmworks feature is also produced by Fleifel alongside Geoff Arbourne from Fleifel, Fyzal Boulifa and Jason McColgan’s screenplay.

With the context of the horrors happening in Gaza, To A Land Unknown’s presence at the film festival as the only Palestinian film screening carried with it a certain impact. Whilst the narrative explores other themes, the topic of displacement and longing for a sense of home you once had are a shared sentiment. This is not the first time Palestinian-Danish director Fleifel has explored this themes, with his award-winning 2012 documentary A World Not Ours, also exploring the feeling of being without a place to call your home created with the profiles of the refugee camps of Lebanon.

Image courtesy of Festival de Cannes