Mahdi Fleifel’s narrative debut is an ode to the forcibly displaced and the journeys they have to take

By Liana Yadav

“Reda, what do we have to lose?” 

Each time they hatch an escape route to Germany, Palestinian cousins Reda and Chatila ask the same question. Stuck in Athens after fleeing from a refugee camp in Lebanon, the men in fact have everything to lose: their lives, their freedom, their savings, their families back home, but most importantly, each other.

To a Land Unknown is director Mahdi Fleifel’s narrative debut that screened at the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) on Sept. 24. The film opens with a seven-minute short film called Fragmented by Tanya Marar. In the short, Qassem, a retired ex-political prisoner who fled his home in Gaza on his daughter’s insistence 20 days after the genocide began, speaks somberly about the guilt he lives with. The grief in Qassem’s eyes is palpable as he echoes a sentiment that haunts Palestinians affected by the devastating death and destruction in Gaza. 

“This war changed everything…where is the humanity? You just see death, so what’s left?” Fragmented speaks to feelings of displacement felt by refugees fleeing war. His words offer the audience a gateway into the lives of two cousins separated from their families like Qassem, in the hopes of finding belonging and safety far from home.

Owned and distributed by Watermelon Pictures, To a Land Unknown begins with Chatila and Reda eyeing unsuspecting locals on the streets of Athens whose purse they can grab. They pass a cigarette back and forth, the vapour escaping their lips even as they huff and puff, running to safety with their loot of the day. The money they make always ends up in the same safe place — a small pocket in a dingy garage only they know to access through a small window in an alley.

For Reda and Chatila, getting to Athens was just the beginning of a long journey. With much determination and optimism, the cousins hope to start their own cafe in Berlin, where they will then bring Chatila’s son and wife, who they left behind in Lebanon.

Where Fleifel consciously gets us to sympathize for the cousins, he also makes clear they are quick to inflict harm on others if it means escaping suffering for themselves. Chatila puts a 13-year-old boy in harm’s way and manipulates a lonely Greek woman to experiment with a grand escape plan. When frustrated, the pair even cause pain to each other — a reminder by Fleifel that these characters live in a jungle, a dog-eat-dog world. Chatila and Reda are in cahoots with shady people and not one moment escapes in the film when you feel they’re free of danger.

The film intentionally leaves in many unanswered questions for the audience to grapple with. How many people are left with no choice but to incite pain on others because of the desperation of their circumstances? How many uncounted martyrs are there, that have passed outside of their homeland and ultimately because they had to flee it? How many more blood-relatives like Reda and Chatila are forced to turn on each other, even when their brotherhood is all they have?

Both protective of and annoyed by Reda, Chatila is at his wit’s end when his cousin spends all of their savings on heroin. But where Reda often holds them back, he also supplies the optimism that helps keep them going. “Chatila is smart,” he tells his friends. “He’ll make it work.” 

Moments in the film show hope dwindling as the cousins face setback after setback. All their resources get depleted, except the unshakable resolve with which they want to get their family to safety. Giving up is not an option. When Chatila and Reda realize they do not have enough money to arrange passports from their source, they devise a plan that involves extortion, torture, violence and burglary. 

With high risk comes high reward and their plan puts everything at stake. Little by little, Chatila’s empathy for anyone but him disappears. When Reda asks him if they’re bad people, Chatila doesn’t hesitate before he says it’s not personal.

In the crossfire between the devastation in the Global South, nothing is personal. War, genocide, violence, murder, starvation — it’s all business, the means to an end. The deaths are casualties that need to occur for a point to be made. It’s never personal and yet, whole families and civilizations are destroyed. A new form of hatred is created, then perpetuated over years before being folded in the world order, affecting the temperament of generations. 

Chatila is the brains, while Reda is the arms of their operations. They make a strong team, but also a vulnerable one. The stakes are different for both of them; while Chatila wants to reunite with his wife and son in a safer country, Reda doesn’t have anything pulling him to safety. 

In many ways, it seems as if Reda and Chatila have been set up to fail. There is no right way out of their situation, as undocumented refugees who do not have access to a job, a passport, or something safe waiting for them elsewhere. Any decision good for their future is a crime in the eyes of law. Hurtful words exchanged between the bickering cousins linger like heavy weight in each scene as they disagree about the morality of their actions.

In an emotional moment where he is afraid of losing Reda, Chatila confesses that the cafe in Berlin wasn’t just for his wife and son, it was also for Reda and himself. Reda — who never felt he was important, who sells his own body to make up for his mistakes, who feels constantly at fault — wants to see Chatila happy more than he even wants to get to Berlin. The meaning of home for the duo changes over the course of the film but ultimately, it lands in the only place where they feel safe — with each other.

In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Fleifel says his characters are not refugees, they’re exiles. They feel shame for having left family behind, they feel guilt for selling their bodies and they feel pain for having to turn on their own people. Fleifel emphasizes that his purpose is not to show the story of villains, victims, or even heroes. His characters are human; they’re human when they cheat, scam and lie and they’re human when they love, help and cry. 

Acutely aware of his privilege, having ended up a Danish citizen despite his own beginning in a Lebanese refugee camp, Fleifel does not consider himself or the viewer in any position to judge. His goal is to tell the true stories of exiles who find themselves stuck between entrapment and freedom, in a state he describes as purgatory.

After two years of genocide in Palestine, stories like Reda and Chatila’s are all around us. It is more important than ever for us to understand, feel and remember such stories that will one day become history. If you’re interested in a gritty telling about the ripple effects of forced displacement that run deep across faraway lands, be sure to set some time aside to watch To a Land Unknown.