After playing more than 100 festivals starting at Cannes, Mahdi Fleifel’s acclaimed refugee drama “To a Land Unknown” from Palestine is finally coming to theaters from Watermelon Pictures. IndieWire exclusively debuts the trailer for “To a Land Unknown” below.
The film follows Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and Reda (Aram Sabbah), cousins and refugees stranded in Athens and trying to reach Germany. To escape Greece, they hatch a plan to pose as smugglers taking hostages, with dire consequences for their friendship. “It’s especially moving to me, in these incredible times, to present a Palestinian film at Cannes. As Palestinians, we challenge media stereotypes, but more importantly, we defy invisibility, a struggle we’ve faced since the beginning. Our stories are needed now more than ever,” Fleifel, born in Dubai from Palestinian parents but raised in Denmark, said announcing the movie. This is Fleifel’s first narrative feature after the acclaimed documentary “A World Not Ours” premiered at TIFF more than a decade ago.
Related Stories
More on the film from the official synopsis: “The film tells the story of Chatila and Reda, two Palestinian cousins and best friends who are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of of Athens. When Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan, which involves them posing as smugglers and taking hostages in an effort to get him and his best friend out of their hopeless environment before it is too late.”
IndieWire praised “To a Land Unknown” in an A- review out of the 2024 Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, with Sophie Monks Kaufman writing, “‘To a Land Unknown’ is a tour-de-force of empathic storytelling, with its genre narrative bursting with an overabundance of humanity. The unexpected, far-away place that Said references is expressed fully, as both a geographical reality and a soul in exile.”
“To a Land Unknown” opens in theaters on Friday, July 11. Check out the film’s first trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.
