To a Land Unknown, starring Mahmoud Bakri, Aram Sabbagh, and Angeliki Papoulia, premiered at the 77th Cannes International Film Festival, where Fleifel was nominated for Directors' Fortnight.
The film won the Fischer Audience Award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, the Silver Yusr prize at the Red Sea Film Festival, and the CineCoPro Award at the Munich Film Festival.
Several countries participated in producing the film, including Palestine, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
To a Land Unknown follows the story of a Palestinian refugee living in Athens who gets ripped off by a smuggler and sets out to seek revenge. Inspired by Ghassan Kanafani's novella Men in the Sun (1962), the film is Fleifel's debut narrative feature.
Fleifel is a Dubai-born Palestinian-Danish filmmaker whose credits as a director include several highly successful films. His film A Drowning Man (2019) received BAFTA and Palme d'Or nominations for Best Short Film and a Short Cuts nomination at TIFF 2017.
His feature documentary A World Not Ours (2012) was nominated for the People's Choice Award at TIFF (2012).
The festival shows a wide selection of highly artistic feature films, documentaries, and short films. It also includes other events in its two program sections: ALFILM Selection and ALFILM Spotlight.
The Egyptian film Perfumed with Mint by Mohamed Hamdy is part of the festival's programme.
The ALFILM festival was launched in 2009 by the non-profit association Zentrum für arabische Filmkunst und Kultur e.V. (formerly Freunde der Arabischen Kinemathek, Berlin e.V.). The festival is dedicated to Arab cinema and its filmmakers, including diaspora filmmakers. It is the largest platform for promoting diverse Arab cinematography in Germany.
According to the festival's website, ALFILM "highlight films from the Arab world and its diaspora that have a high artistic value and present challenging perspectives on contemporary cultural, social, and political issues."
Discussions with filmmakers and experts tackle socially and artistically relevant topics while offering new and stimulating views on the coexistence of cultures, diversity, and the portrayal and representation of minorities in mainstream society. Panel discussions also discuss current themes and film talks."
The 16th edition of the festival will hold a special Spotlight section titled "Canceled Futures, Endless Pasts: Speculative Fiction on and Archival Subversions of the (Post)colonial Condition."
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