Directed by: Mahdi Fleifel
Written by: Mahdi Fleifel, Fyzal Boulifa, and Jason McColgan
Starring: Mahmoud Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Mohammad Alsurafa, Angeliki Papoulia, and Monther Rayahneh
Runtime: 106 minutes
‘To a Land Unknown’ spotlights a gritty and anxious refugee conundrum in one of the planet’s most famous cities
Athens, Greece’s capital, enjoys millions of tourists every year. The City of the Violet Crown offers plenty of attractions, like the Parthenon, the Acropolis, the Temple of Hephaestus, and much more.
Chatila (Mahmoud Bakri) and his cousin Reda (Aram Sabbah), two 20-somethings, are Athens’ tourists, but not in the traditional sense.
The unemployed Palestinian refugees attempt to earn a living by stealing purses, swiping merchandise from local businesses, and through other nefarious means.
Chatila anxiously hopes to reach Germany to start a new life and open a café. Reda, a recovering heroin addict, is along for Chatila’s ride and will find some blue-collar work in Deutschland, possibly as an enforcer if anyone messes with his cousin’s café.
The men need passports, and a local, Marwan (Monther Rayahneh), can forge documents for the right price.
Our flawed protagonists need cash.
Outside of his petty misdeeds, Chatila devises a couple of grander schemes for big paydays, and his plans include allies/pawns, such as a lonely single Greek woman, Tatiana (Angeliki Papoulia), a 13-year-old Turkish boy, Malik (Mohammad Alsurafa), and a few others.
The cousins face extremely long odds for success, and director/co-writer Mahdi Fleifel, Bakri, and Sabbah envelop and cloud the audience with feelings of doom and dread.
Fleifel’s gritty and captivating modern-day crime indie pulls moviegoers into a ground-level conundrum where two refugees frantically yearn for a new home, a new country. Chatila and Reda crave to land in a new land and find a fresh start, but achieving their goals without deception, crime, and harsh transgressions remains unknown.
Fleifel’s film feels raw and authentic and is set mostly away from Athens’ glamour and natural beauty. The script pits Chatila and Reda on a butte’s peak during a couple of brief scenes overlooking the historic locale, but almost every other on-screen minute spends time in coarse, untidy urban housing centers, which are not unique to Athens, as similar economically distressed districts can be found in just about every metropolitan center on the planet.
Cinematographer Thodoros Mihopoulos and location manager Sonia Koulepi critically contribute to the film’s purposely designed dour mood, as the working-class or poverty-driven city streets, residences, and shops are flush with gloomy grays, and sometimes, apartments have open windows that allow the heat or sticky fingers to enter unabated.
The young men’s chances for finding honest employment and building wealth and prosperity in their current surroundings (and with their associated mindsets) seem slimmer than meeting Zeus, Apollo, and Aphrodite in person.
Bakri and Sabbah have only a few acting credits each, but they deliver convincing performances that effectively portray their characters’ misery and hopelessness. Chatila and Reda sport makeshift beards, unkempt attire, and exhausted, frustrated personas, as a life of petty crimes is the only option to reach the Promised Land in their minds.
At one point, Reda says, “We are bad people,” but Chatila justifies their actions for the greater good.
Well, not the greater good but THEIR greater good. Chatila also proposes making up for their trespasses and lies with future good deeds, but Reda dismisses his cousin’s declaration as mere talk.
Fleifel, Fyzal Boulifa, and Jason McColgan’s script also knowingly toys with the audience regarding the morality levels of our two lead characters. They are both imperfect men, but the movie swings back and forth in depicting which one is more ethically damaged, creating frequently shifting thoughts of empathy and dissatisfaction for Chatila and Reda throughout the film’s 106-minute runtime.
Despite their questionable judgment, we’re rooting for the cousins to reach their goals, but with a profound wish that they minimize the harm directed toward strangers and colleagues who encircle their modest orbit.
Will karma catch up with them?
Chatila and Reda may or may not be too quick for the aforementioned karma, which effectively places our leads and moviegoers under duress. Granted, “To a Land Unknown” is not as stressful as living through the 430 BC Athens plague, but this movie is light years away from a pleasant holiday jaunt to the Parthenon.
Jeff’s ranking
3.5/4 stars