To a Land Unknown

Original title: To a Land Unknown
Genre: Comedy / Drama / Crime / Mystery thriller
Director: Mahdi Fleifel
Country: Great Britain, Greece, Denmark, The Netherlands, Palestine, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Qatar
Year of production: 2024
Czas: 106 min

Awards and nominations:
2024 Galway Film Fleadh: Best Film
2024 Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival: Antigone d’Or for Best Film; Student Award
2024 Munich Film Festival: CineCoPro Award
2024 Taormina International Film Festival: Audience Award
2024 Thessaloniki Film Festival: Audience Award; Best Actor – Mahmoud Bakri

A story of friendship, human weaknesses, and what you’re ready to do to escape everyday life of the banished. It’s a clash of the Eastern perspective of solidarity with bureaucratic obstacles of the West.
Chatila and Reda desperately need money. They want to buy forged passports and leave for Athens. Unfortunately, Chatila is faced with brutal reality when Reda loses the hard-earned money to finance his destructive addiction. In order to save his friend and himself, Chatila comes up with a plan that’s so crazy it’s believable: they will pretend to be traffickers and take recruited clients hostage. They use desperate measures to escape the misery they found themselves in against their own will.
Mahdi Fleifel’s scored 93 percent of positive reviews from international critics on Rotten Tomatoes. No wonder, because there’s a lot it can be praised for: meticulous screenplay boasting emotional truth, cinematography depicting the characters’ everyday life, perfect music score, and immaculate casting.
Author: Justyna Bryczkowska

Director:
Mahdi Fleifel – a Danish-Palestinian director interested in depicting social injustice and the struggles of Palestinians living in exile. In 2016 he was awarded the Silver Bear for his short film “A Man Returned” at the Berlin Film Festival. He was nominated for multiple awards, including the Golden Palm for best short film in Cannes, the BAFTA award, and the European Film Award.

   subtitles in Polish and English