THE STORY – A Palestinian refugee living on the fringes of society in Athens gets ripped off by a smuggler and sets out to seek revenge.
THE CAST – Mahmood Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Angeliki Papoulia, Mohammad Alsurafa, Mouataz Alshalton, Mohammad Ghassan & Mondher Rayahneh
THE TEAM – Mahdi Fleifel (Director/Writer), Fyzal Boulifa & Jason McColgan (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 105 Minutes
From the moment we see two thuggish guys — tough guy Chatila (Mahmoud Bakri) and his cousin Reda (Aram Sabbah) — as they sit and smoke on a park bench, we just know they’re bad news. And sure enough, our suspicions are confirmed when they double-team a victim to steal her purse. Worse yet, when they are approached by 13-year-old Malik (Mohammad Alsurafa), a fellow Palestinian refugee, asking for their help in getting him to Italy to be with his aunt, they rebuff him coldly. What a couple of monsters. But how director Mahdi Fleifel turns this pair of goons into two of the most complex and layered characters of any 2024 film is just one of the revelations in “To a Land Unknown,” a compelling migrant drama with a twist.
The setting is Athens, where cousins Chatila and Reda hope will be just a stopoff as they seek to obtain black market passports that will enable them to emigrate to what they think will be a new life in Germany. However, such passports are expensive to buy on the black market, and with their paltry funds from their petty thievery, they are effectively in a state of limbo. After having gotten out of a refugee camp in Lebanon, they find themselves men without a country who fear that their dreams of a new life are slipping away from them.
As we come to know Chatila, however, it becomes clear that he is a man with a plan. His dream life in Germany will be centered around his family, with his goal being to take his wife and their three-year-old son there, where they would open a Palestinian cafe in the local Arab community. But as much as Chatila loves his cousin, Reda has proven to be an unreliable partner. Happily, he has been clean over the past few months, but when his drug connection resurfaces, Reda soon relapses, having stolen their passport money to buy his latest heroin hit.
Another filmmaker would likely pass judgment on the cousins’ criminal actions, treating their illegal activity as a blight on the good name of emigres. But Fleifel takes a far more empathetic approach to his characters, acknowledging their actions as wrong but seeing them more as moral compromises toward a greater good. It’s the bind that they’re in that generates Fleifel’s sympathetic point of view, and it’s these complexities that keep the audience engaged.
That approach is put to the test, however, when they cross paths with Malik once more. The boy’s plight prompts Chatila to concoct a scheme that would get the boy to Italy and enough cash in their pockets to get those much-needed passports. But when a snag in the plan requires risking the lives of innocent Syrian refugees, the cousins’ ability to live with their moral compromises is tested in a way that it never had been before.
If the escape plan provides Fleifel with the narrative drive for “To a Land Unknown,” he is as interested in exploring the kind of netherworld that being without a country to call home drives emigres to take such risks. The hollowed-out building where the emigres crash has the look and feel of despair and resignation, with Chatila seeming to be the only one with a plan readied to get out. What drives him, of course, is his love of and need for family, and those family ties extend to Reda as well, no matter how many times he screws up. Indeed, the complex bond between these two men is the heart and soul of “To a Land Unknown.”
The fact that the film is so effectively moving can be credited mainly to its extremely well-crafted screenplay by Fleifel, Fyzal Boulifa, and Jason McColgan. They establish the cousins’ plight and set up the escape plan quickly and efficiently, so much so that there’s enough room for the characters to become grounded and breathe. The way in which Bakri and Sabbagh use that space to slowly reveal character results in one of the great acting duets of 2024.
As Reda, Sabbagh brings an unexpected sweetness to his character, always wanting to see the good in people, even as his drug addiction forces him to act on unsavory options — from petty thievery to male prostitution — to help fund it. For his part, Bakri brings a decided machismo to Chatila, but he slowly reveals that much of that is an image he needs to maintain. Bringing his family back together is everything for Chatila, and as much as he is panicking deep inside with every roadblock put in his way, he can never let them see him sweat. Yet together, Chatila and Reda show a familial love and tenderness with each other that I haven’t seen expressed onscreen between two men in recent memory.
That bond is so strong, in fact, that when I think back upon “To a Land Unknown,” I think less of other films about emigres caught between countries and more of one that reflects that similar masculine bond — John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy.” As Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo wandered the streets of New York, fantasizing about a chance to start a new life in Florida, so do our two Palestinian emigres in Athens dreaming of Germany. And if there’s any doubt that Fleifel had that Oscar-winning film on his mind, prepare to be moved by the film’s long, lingering final shot. It does the spirit of John Schlesinger proud.
