What would you do for a fresh start, to change the shape and tenor of your life forever? Documentarian Mahdi Fleifel’s first narrative feature explores the complexities of extricating oneself from the struggle through this thrilling drama about Reda (Aram Sabbah) and Chatila (Mahmood Bakri), two Palestinian refugees in Athens, Greece, trying to raise enough money to get passports to move to Germany.
When we meet the two cousins, they’re lounging in a park together, people watching. Chatila possesses a hungry vigilance, hyperaware of his surroundings, eyes darting around the periphery. Reda, the pluckier of the two, seems similarly hollowed out while he tools in a small circle on his skateboard. In quick succession, Chatila finds his mark, an older woman with an oversized handbag. Reda “slips” on his board at her feet, providing the distraction Chatila needs to abscond with her bag, and the two to make a quick getaway.
This blatant theft is what passes for employment for two young men stranded in a refugee camp. They live in shared housing with dozens of other men, each in a similar predicament, performing any petty crime or odd job they can stack together to pay off smuggling middleman Marwan (Mondher Rayahneh) for the passports he’s promised them. Several obstacles make this escape plan feel insurmountable. Chatila has a wife and young son who are far away in a refugee camp in Lebanon, and he has to try to support them. But Reda has a drug problem he’s trying to kick, so Chatila also has to babysit his cousin and hide their earnings so he doesn’t relapse and shoot them all up.
When Reda inevitably cracks and sets the duo back, the two take diverging routes to make up for the lost funds. Reda, racked with guilt for his lack of impulse control, reluctantly returns to sex work, turning tricks for strange men, sacrificing his body in his quest for a new life. But Chatila? Ever the schemer, the solutions he finds for their problems turn his eagerness to flee into a black hole, pulling all within his orbit. Necessity is the mother of invention, and he conjures up fixes that worsen his problems. Chatila takes the young boy, Malik (Mohammad Alsurafa), who becomes like a little brother to them, and Tatiana (Angeliki Papoulia), the lonely, bohemian drunk who has a crush on him, and turns them into unintentional collateral for a smuggling plot designed to get everyone involved in what they really want.
But poverty is like quicksand. Murphy’s Law becomes a torturous kind of inertia when you lack the resources to rebound from setbacks.
But poverty is like quicksand. Murphy’s Law becomes a torturous kind of inertia when you lack the resources to rebound from setbacks. Even more so when the ethical backflips you’re performing to get ahead push you into riskier and harder to justify compromises. When one dangerous plot backfires, it leads to less savory alternatives. Before long, the fine line between truly grotesque exploitation and light thievery becomes so blurred it ceases to exist.
The way Fleifel captures this unique predicament is genuinely impressive. Initially, we only see the theft for explanatory purposes, but once we know the two men, their transgressions move off-screen. Two particular instances feel the most haunting. One comes when we see Chatila drift away from a conversation with Tatiana when he sees a tourist who looks like a good mark. Fleifel cuts to a faraway view of Chatila stalking the tourist, framed like something out of a vampire movie with their shadows so pronounced and exaggerated. The other comes from our introduction to Reda’s sex work, the camera following him and a john into a wooded area, like a dark fairytale perspective that averts its gaze when the act begins.
As the two men cross more and more lines in their final elaborate gambit to leave Athens, all the ugliness is front and center, captured for the audience to see with no artful exclusions. We have to see what they’ve done for what it really is, and so do they. The whole cast delivers strong work, especially many of the non-professionals, but the two leads display remarkable chemistry and leave such stark impressions on the viewer.
There’s an image in the middle of the film where Reda writhes in bed, shirtless and aching, while a tattoo on his midsection in the shape of Gaza becomes impossible not to stare at. It’s an otherwise innocuous shot, but it will likely stick with you by the time the film draws to a close.
Just as the lengths they go to — and the ills they subject themselves to — feel fully realized, the scant moments where Reda and Chatila take respite from their toiling to wax philosophically about their imagined life in Germany prove haunting and relatable. Chatila wants to open a cafe, where his wife can cook, in an old neighborhood where other Palestinians can find a taste of home, even in a foreign country. They long for a home that doesn’t feel like a convoluted prison. But there’s a scene where Reda describes the operation to Malik, who asks what exactly Reda will do in this cafe. It’s clear that Reda has never given real thought to what his role would be in this future; he is literally selling himself to achieve it. Still, he speaks with such conviction when says that he’ll fight anyone who gets in the way.
Fleifel borrows much of the tone from his documentary work, while stylizing the events just enough to accentuate his ideas. It’s very modern, but spiritually speaks to the ‘70s cinema of films like “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Midnight Cowboy,” all while fixing its gaze on the plight of the Palestinian diaspora. There’s an image in the middle of the film where Reda writhes in bed, shirtless and aching, while a tattoo on his midsection in the shape of Gaza becomes impossible not to stare at. It’s an otherwise innocuous shot, but it will likely stick with you by the time the film draws to a close.
“To a Land Unknown” is currently playing at The Parkway Theater.