To a Land Unkown 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 configuration of oppression—is not petty-thieving or sex-working their way to fake passports, but becomes far more elaborate scheme. To help Malik and themselves, Chatila and Reda must take up a one-time gig as smugglers, outwit another smuggler and outfox other oppressed Arab men from other war-ravaged lands.
Fleifel’s powerful, suspenseful dramatic thriller begins with a quote from Edward Said, weaves in a poem by Mahmoud Darwish and is, as Fleifel reveals in this interview, a reworking of a landmark book by Ghassan Kanafani. As inspirations go, Fleifel chose giants among Palestinian writers and literary critics of the last sixty years. An eight-nation coproduction, To A Land Unknown feels like a purposeful outgrowth of the feature documentary and handful of shorts that Fleifel made in the past twelve years. I spoke to Fleifel over Zoom; Watermelon Pictures, a distribution company emphasizing Palestinian cinema, releases the film in theaters in the US on July 11.
Filmmaker: Can you talk about setting this Palestinian story in Athens? This film is not Greek cinema, but it’s still a story set in Greece and thus about Greece. What has been the response of Greek audiences in this regard, and to the portrayal of Athens?
Fleifel: Greek cinema, traditionally, doesn’t really delve into social realism, let alone poetic realism. They more like to play with metaphors and symbolism. That’s their kind of cinema, so [the film] may not have been a thing for them. I was surprised to see that the film was really well received, and reviews have been generous. But in Greece in particular, they were not happy about it. [laughs] They didn’t slaughter it but they weren’t that enthusiastic. Somehow, because of history, they’re in it. They could recognize that part of the city [where the story takes place]. To them it was an Athens that seemed authentic but they had never seen portrayed in cinema before. I took that as a compliment.
[Ultimately] this is a story of the underbelly, of people that you either don’t like or don’t want there or don’t know or understand. This is their Athens. How do refugees coming from the Middle East come to Europe? Well, through Greece. They have to deal with all this. Somehow, no matter how much we tried to spin the film as a thriller—it is a thriller—[Greek audiences] weren’t taking it. I’ve been making films about these guys [like the characters in the film] for many years through my documentary work. Somehow I’ve been labeled a “refugee director.” These characters are not refugees, they are exiles. Technically, you could label them “refugee,” but going deeper, who are these people? They’re exiled from this world. They live in a state of longing, a state of wanting to belong somewhere. That’s the emotional aspect I am interested in.
One thing that I don’t like about social realism is when it becomes edifying or has a moral aspect to it, like at the end, we’re going tell you how life really is, and all these salt of the earth that are martyred because of this unfair system—that’s not what I’m about. I want to go to the dark side of mankind, what is really going on. I want to talk about shame. Like, what is it like for a young man to have left his wife and kid back in the camp and not being able to be there for them or provide for them? In fact, you’re the one who has to call your wife sometime and ask her to send you a hundred bucks via Western Union. What does it feel like to have to go to the parks and do things with people in the bushes that you never imagine you’d do, just to get by the day?
Filmmaker: You brought up the idea of exile. For me, this brings up the idea of diaspora. Do you feel that because you’re a member of the Palestinian diaspora since you live in Denmark, and since you’re also interested in stories about people in exile, did you choose to set this story in Athens because it’s somewhere in between and reflects the state of being in between?
Fleifel: I mean, life happens to you, and you’re either open to it or you’re not. I found myself in Athens one day, with a camera, because I was making a documentary about my childhood friend. My parents were born in the camps, I used to spend my summer holidays in the camp. But I was privileged enough to leave, go to Europe and become a European. I was still fascinated by what happened to my friends who never left. I was making this documentary called A World Not Ours that follows my childhood friend who leaves the camp to go to Europe and finds himself stranded in Athens. When I called him to see where he is now and if he had made it to Germany, he said, “No man, I’m stuck in Athens.” So when I went to see him, this whole new world opened up.
Being Palestinian and being among Palestinians in this purgatory, this stopover—none of them really wanted to be in Greece, but it is the gateway to Europe. They were trying to find the right smuggler, the right route. I was immediately bitten by this idea. There was an urgency and a necessity, like I had to tell this story, but then you try and find the form. Then you’re immediately tapping into the stories you heard as a kid. One of the first things that came to mind was this novella by Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun. Kanafani was a prolific Palestinian writer who died tragically. He was killed by Mossad, age 36. He was brilliant; he could have won the Nobel Prize today. He managed to write novels, plays, short stories and make paintings, and was the editor of a newspaper. He wrote Men in the Sun in the ’60s, and he was talking about young men leaving the camps in the ’50s to go and work at what at the time was “El Dorado,” and that was in the Gulf. It wasn’t Europe. They would go to Kuwait. So, this is a story about three men who are trying, with the help of a smuggler., to make it to Kuwait and end up stranded in this purgatory desert space between Iraq and Kuwait. It’s a tragedy, essentially.
When I lived in Athens, I was like, “Oh my God, this is Men in the Sun,” just decades later. Now El Dorado is Europe, and the desert is this urban desert. Try to go to Athens in the middle of August and you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s hell on earth, it’s a concrete desert. So, immediately my brain made this connection and I thought, “OK, this is going to be a modern adaptation of Men in the Sun. In fact, for many years until the [premiere] at Cannes, it was called [that]. We had to write to [Cannes] and say, the film is no longer called Men in the Sun. It’s called To A Land Unknown.
In addition to Kanafani, you have Edward Said. Said was the first person to explain to me what was really going on inside. I came to Denmark when I was nine, and I was like, “What’s going on here? Am I Danish? Am I Palestinian? Am I European? Am I an Arab?” I was so confused.When I read Reflections on Exile in my 20s, Said took me by the hand and said, “Hey, you’re an exile. It’s a painful place to be.” He describes it almost as a spiritual state of being, a longing. We are people who long for a nation, for an army to protect us, for all these things that non-exiles have, you know? But we don’t know what it’s like. All we know is the longing. For me, that’s what the film is about. That’s why I put his quote [at the top of the film].
Filmmaker: As you said, it’s too easy to brand characters like Chatila and Reda as refugees. I’m thinking of other recent films that show the journeys of oppressed Arab and Muslim populations en route to Western Europe, to countries like Germany and Sweden, even Denmark. Flee comes to mind. Of course there are different reasons for the characters’ journeys. How do you feel your film converses as if at all it does converse with these recent films?
Fleifel: To be honest, the only film that I like of all those films—I’m not saying that the rest are bad films—is L’Escale (Stop-Over). It was made by this Iranian filmmaker [Kaveh Bakhtiari]. He’s not exactly a filmmaker. He was like, “My cousin is stuck in Athens, having left Iran, and he’s living with seven men in a basement flat. I’m gonna take my camera and go there.” That for me was a film where I felt there was an authenticity and honesty.
It’s a question of perspective, right? How are you approaching this? From what angle? Are you in it or are you looking from outside in?I see our film as a film about exiles, but it’s made by exiles. You can argue it’s made for exiles. I’m privileged, but you can take the guy out of the refugee camp; you can’t take the camp out [of me]. The camp is a huge part of my life. I’m now sitting here in my beautiful, small apartment in Copenhagen surrounded by art and books and whatnot, but I don’t forget that my father was born in a tent in ’54.
Filmmaker: I was definitely taken by Edward Said’s quote in the beginning, but also really enjoyed the beautiful poem recited so beautifully by the drug dealer character, Abu Love, in a quiet stretch of the second half. The first lyric is lovely: “The mask has fallen from the mask.” Did you always wanted to include a poem, and why this one? And why did you give it to the Abu Love character?
Fleifel: I wanted to include a poem. When we were working on the last version [of the script] with [my co-writer] Fyzal Boulifa, I said, “We’re introducing a poet [the Abu Love character]. I’m going to be pretty disappointed if he’s not going to recite a poem at some point in the film. What kind of poet is that?” For me, it made sense [to have the poem] when they’re all waiting in Tatiana’s apartment. That would be the fitting moment for Abu Love. This is what we do, this is tradition. We sit together telling stories or lighting candles, reciting poetry, singing. That’s where we come from. And I knew that it had to be [the poetry of] Mahmoud Darwish. Who else? So, it was a conversation with Mouataz Alshaltouh, who plays Abu Love.
One of the things that I did not want to compromise on was the casting, and I was fighting to the last bit for every single member of the cast [including] Abu Love. I wanted several actors that were supposed to come from Jordan. For whatever reason, the Greek ambassador in Jordan was not giving them a visa. They couldn’t come in. So, we had to shuffle and I had to do a lot of last minute Zoom auditions. I had found this guy in Berlin who I reluctantly cast [as] I had two weeks to shoot and needed an Abu Love. He could do it, but he wasn’t the guy I had in mind. He was big and had long hair. He reminded me a little bit of Danny the Dealer from Withnail and I. I was like, “I don’t know if that confrontation at the end with Chatila would make sense, because he’s bigger than Chatila.” I thought, “I’ll find a way to make it work.”
Rhen I was supposed to cast someone for the [very last minute] replacement of Reda. What happened is that Mouataz turned up on my Zoom, and I was auditioning him for Reda, and I was like, “Hang on, this is Abu Love.” The casting director said, “You’ve already cast Abu Love. He’s flying in from Berlin.” I said, “No, you have got to cancel and pay him the replacement fee.” She’s like, “No, you’re crazy. You can’t do this.” “Says who? I’m telling you, I just found Abu Love.” I was like, “You’re a poet. I need you to show me what you got.” So [Mouataz] would send me WhatsApp audios, reciting all these poems he had memorized by Mahmoud Darwish. After a few, he sent me this one [“The Mask Has Fallen”]. And I was like, “That’s the one, baby.”
Filmmaker: [Major Spoiler Alert] Wow. I found the moment of the poem so bittersweet. Abu Love recites it so beautifully, as we’re all waiting to see what’s going to happen to these characters. But he is also the person who brings in the drugs that are ultimately the undoing of Reda. The same character who brings such beauty to those words as a poet is also the undoing of this duo at the center of the film. Is that something that you had thought about?
Fleifel: I mean, not in the way that you’re describing it. In my previous works following Palestinian refugee youth from the camps, in Lebanon in particular, I’d come across the work of sociologist, Marie Kortam. She had coined the term, “Three Logical Exits.” I actually made a short film called 3 Logical Exits. It follows a guy whose name is Reda [Al-Saleh]. I have made two short films about Reda, the other called A Man Returned. Reda’s real life story is that he died of an overdose in Athens.
The three logical exits that Kortam talks about are basically the three obvious exits that any young refugee has in Lebanon. One is joining a political faction, to get a sense of identity, maybe some pocket money. Buying or selling drugs is logical exit number two. Logical exit number three is to flee, to cross some border and try your luck. These exits were always in the back of my mind. After having portrayed [the real life] Reda’s story in my previous works, it dawned on me that Marie had perhaps forgotten or hadn’t mentioned a fourth exit, which is the exit-exit. Given these three options, there has to be a fourth one. That was that was sort of the logic behind [the fate of Reda in this film]. But yeah, they’re all intertwined. [Spoilers End]
Filmmaker: I almost read Abu Love as an antagonist, but from hearing you, maybe he wasn’t?
Fleifel: Depends on how you see it. Chatila saw him as an antagonistic force. For Reda, maybe he was and he wasn’t. I don’t like things to be straight. I always like that there is a nuance to things. It’s good, but it’s also bad, but it’s also good.
Filmmaker: I found it fascinating that the character of Malik, for whom Reda and Chatila risk so much, was a strong character. He has this grounded wisdom, far beyond his 13 years. I was curious if you had considered that. Would it have been in the scope of the story to have made Malik a weaker character? Not a victim but someone who does not have the street smarts about him. What if Malik was more similar to Reda in some ways?
Fleifel: I hear what you’re saying, but for me, it wouldn’t have made sense. This is a jungle, a dog-eat-dog world. How do you survive? You’ve got to man up. This kid is trying to be a man among these men, and kids have a tendency to mimic and copy their surroundings in order to survive. So, for me, it was obvious to see this kid quickly step into a role of a little man. No parents—he has to go and talk to the smuggler by himself. It’s also a much more fun character. How else do you play with, for example, the shoe stealing scene with the negotiation with Yasser in the park? You have a giant in the form of Yasser, bullying or undermining. Reda’s not going to be able to stand up. Bring in the little guy. These things come to you when you’re working on the script. When we were working on that scene, it was the most obvious thing. Plus, for me, these guys were not going to be anyone’s fucking victim. This is the thing about Palestinians being portrayed in media in general: they’re either terrorists or victims. These guys are like, “Hey, we’re neither, thank you very much.”