Palestinians in Purgatory: Mahdi Fleifel on To A Land Unknown
Midway through To A Land Unknown, Palestinian-Danish filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel’s narrative feature debut, Palestinian cousins stranded in Athens—sharp Chatila (Mahmood Bakri), his wife and kid back in Lebanon’s camps, and sensitive Reda (Aram Sabbah), working hard to rein in his drug addiction—find themselves wanting to help Malik (Mohammad Alsurafa), a 13-year-old Palestinian orphan new to Athenian streets, get to his undocumented refugee aunt in Italy. The duo’s passage to Germany—to Europe, to freedom, to the autonomy of running their own cafe in some Arab enclave of Berlin, to everything neither Palestine nor Lebanon can offer them in the world’s current […]
by Ritesh Mehta on Jul 10, 2025
