Since the war on Gaza started nearly two years ago, a few Palestinian films have appeared despite the horror, wholesale death and, more recently, deliberately orchestrated famine. The last such film I saw was Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi’s A State of Passion, which traces the Palestinian-British surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah’s sixth journey to Gaza — during genocide. It was an agonising experience.
To a Land Unknown is a less disturbing experience, but it left me deeply melancholic. I’d heard of the Palestinian-Danish filmmaker but it took a while to realise I hadn’t seen any feature by him because, before the present one, he had only made short films — A Drowning Man (2017) and I Signed the Petition (2018) — as well as a documentary on the Ein El-Helweh Refugee Camp where in Lebanon, where he grew up, the 2012 A World Not Ours. Fleifel is a graduate of the British National Film and Television School and has his own London-based production company, founded only one year after his graduation: Nakba FilmWork.
To a Land Unknown opens with a quote by the late Edward Said: “In a way, it’s sort of the fate of Palestinians, not to end up where they started, but somewhere unexpected and far away.” Set in Athens, it is the story of two Palestinian refugees, Chatilah (Mahmoud Bakri) and Reda (Aram Sabbah), who hail from a refugee camp in Lebanon and are forced to stay in Athens until they have the opportunity to resume their journey to Germany, where they hope to join a sizable community of refugees, establishing their own café and then bringing over families and loved ones left behind in Lebanon.
The Greeks are similar to Arabs, Reda says. The Germans are the real Europeans. Athens is but a way station, and they run amok on its streets. They are seen stealing a woman’s purse for five Euros, a story Chatilah is devastated while reporting to his wife Nabila over the phone, telling her they have turned into thieves. They both scam people but Reda also prostitutes himself to men. Co-written by Fleifel, Fyzal Boulifa and Jason McColgan, the screenplay brings the complexity of the layered emotions involved to life beautifully.
Just after the robbery at the beginning of the film, Chatilah and Reda meet Malik, a homeless adolescent from Gaza who has heard them speak Arabic and followed them for comfort. They find out he has no family or friends and, though they initially tell him to go to the police station, end up taking him in.
They are devastated when they realise they’re unable to collect the money needed for fake passports to be provided by another Arab man (Monther Rihana). Chatilah — who is the father figure, a role subtly and masterfully conveyed by Bakri — hides money in a broken water pipe, but it turns out Reda is a heroin addict and has been spending it. Aram Sabbah’s performance is as radiant as his character is rich, with emotions concerning addiction, prostitution, and love for his mother who is worried about him back in Lebanon.
One more plan is attempted when Chatilah meets Tatiana, a Greek girl he manages to seduce even though she knows he has a wife and son, and persuades her to accompany Malik to Italy, where his aunt lives, pretending to be his mother.
When Malik and Tatiana’s phones stay off, Chatilah realises they have been caught but works out a way to scam refugees who want to leave the country. This leads to further problems as they turn to their drug dealer friend among others to help them lock up their victims in Tatiana’s empty apartment — an occasion for the drug dealer to recite Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry, high. The film ends with a predictable tragedy that brings home the much greater tragedy of displaced Palestinians at this crucial moment.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 28 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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