{"id":81001,"date":"2026-07-12T10:03:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T02:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=81001"},"modified":"2026-07-12T10:03:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T02:03:53","slug":"to-a-land-unknown-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=81001","title":{"rendered":"To a Land Unknown (2024)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A film about Palestinian refugees in Greece made by a Danish director of Palestinian origins Mahdi Fleifel can be expected to be sympathetic to their plight. Making your characters flawed is fine and even adds credibility. But I was very shocked that whether intentionally or not, he has delivered a film that effectively warns Europeans that these refugees have been reduced to such desperate straits that they are capable of anything. The premise and the characters are fine but the plot goes so far off the deep end that I wondered if Fleifel knows what he wants to say here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Chatila and Reda are cousins and Palestinian refugees whose families are in Lebanon. Stuck in Athens, Greece, their dream is to find a way to get to Germany where they hope to open a cafe and bring their families over. With no access to formal employment, their own way to make money is to steal, hoping to save enough to pay a fixer Marwan to get them fake passports. Chatila is frustrated however at Reda’s drug habit and his friendship with the dealer and poet Abu Love. One day they run across an unaccompanied 13-year-old boy Malik who wants to go to Italy to join his aunt there. After befriending an alcoholic Greek woman Tatiana in the park, Chatila proposes a plan to help Malik and make money at the same time. He asks Tatiana to pose as the boy’s mother so that he can take a flight into Italy. Upon arrival. the boy’s aunt promises to pay them, splitting the money with Tatiana. Despite Tatiana’s last minutes fears about being caught for human trafficking, Chatila talks her into going ahead with the plan. When the day comes, Tatiana and Malik leave as expected but Chatila becomes anxious when they fail to get in touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This synopsis more or less covers the first half of the film and it’s mostly fine. Chatila and Reda make an awful first impression when the latter fakes on a fall on his skateboard to distract an elderly woman so Chatila can steal her handbag. But we can still sympathize with their desperation. Reda shows that he has a conscience when he worries about the woman needing the medicine in her handbag. Chatila on the other hand cares greatly about his family members including Reda but is ruthless towards everyone else. The most charitable interpretation is that the film portrays the crabs in a bucket mentality that so many Palestinian refugees are stuck in. Worn down by endless trials and bereft of any hope whatsoever, they are willing to do anything to gain respite including dragging their own people down. Fleifel might even be using the story of these two cousins as a metaphor for the larger Palestinian cause being trapped in endless cycles of short-sighted self-destructive as interested parties sabotage one another’s attempts to bring about a lasting resolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second half of the film has Chatila descending to truly monstrous depths and Reda being too weak to stand up to his plans. In doing so, Fleifel very deliberately destroys any possible sympathy or affection the audience can have for them. Chatila’s accomplices in his scheme are little better. It is astonishingly cynical that Abu Rose can recite famous “The mask has fallen from the mask” passage by Mahmoud Darwish about the Palestinian people being betrayed all by sides, exposing the hypocrisies of those claiming to be on their side in one breath. In the very next scene he is clamoring for his share of the loot from victimizing his fellow Palestinians. It’s an impressive feat of self-awareness I suppose but I can’t see how it can be meant to make us look kindly upon the plight of the Palestinians. Seen from our perspective, even their dream of opening a cafe in Germany is an unrealistic and wishful fantasy. It doesn’t help their cause that they sneer at Greece as not really being Europe at all as the people there look like fellow Arabs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all other respects, this is a fine piece of filmmaking. The actors are excellent, the cinematography captures the grittiness of their daily life and the dialogue demonstrates that they are complex humans with layers to them. Yet the overall effect feels like kicking the Palestinians while they are down. I can only conclude that Fleifel isn’t a fan of them moving to build a new life in Europe and wants to emphasize that there is no alternative to a free Palestine. I do not think this is a kind film at all and cannot recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A film about Palestinian refugees in Greece made by a Danish director of Palestinian origins Mahdi Fleifel can be expected to be sympathetic to their plight. Making your characters flawed is fine and even adds credibility. But I was very shocked that whether intentionally or not, he has delivered a film that effectively warns Europeans … Continue reading To a Land Unknown (2024)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81001"}],"version-history":[{"count":55,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81061,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81001\/revisions\/81061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}