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To a Land Unknown
(Mahdi Fleifel, 2024, Greece, Narrative, 106 minutes, in Arabic)
In its opening scenes, To a Land Unknown features a quote from Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, which states, “In a way, it’s sort of the fate of Palestinians, not to end up where they started, but somewhere unexpected and far away.”
Such is the case for Chatila and Reda, the two cousins featured in To a Land Unknown. The narrative film shows what happens when the men are first forced to leave their home country for neighboring Lebanon. Afterwards, with dreams of a better future, they choose to leave their families behind and make the treacherous trip to Europe, thinking that it will offer them better opportunities than those they can find in the Middle East. When they end up stranded in dead-end Greece and not the pie-in-the-sky Germany that they had originally hoped for, they shamefully find that their desperation to survive turns them into petty criminals.
Grainy, realistic, and heart-wrenching, To a Land Unknown is brave in its portrayal of the men. Despite the need to often paint refugees as saints, the film never falls into that temptation; instead, it shows them for the complex characters that they are, trapped in the complex situations that they are. To a Land Unknown shows what happens when hope is what propels one to keep moving ahead towards future-minded goals — yet day-to-day challenges for the cousins to rob old ladies in the park, fight off temptations related to the escapism of hard drugs, and much, much more.
In one key turning point of the movie, the men hatch a scheme to help a young Palestinian boy reunite with his aunt in Italy. The plot involves the support of a Greece woman who they convince to be sympathetic to the cause, and the two are to receive money from the gesture, but suffice it to say that it’s one of their kinder actions in the film. When nothing goes as they had planned, they find themselves wondering what to do next. How else will they reach Germany, so that they can eventually open a family cafe and bring their family members into a better circumstance?
To a Land Unknown is notable in its naturalistic style and singular depiction of modern-day Palestinian refugee life — not just with regards to the cousins themselves, but the entire network of refugees around them. Chatila and Reda rely on the help of another Palestinian who serves as the middleman for everything illegal that they might want, and they live in a compound with other Palestinian refugees. Reflecting upon the entire ecosystem, one comes too understand how refugees from similar communities often stick together for shared survival, even if they don’t always get along and sometimes take advantage of one another.
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Khartoum
(Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Brahim Snoopy, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, Phil Cox, 2025, Sudan, Documentary, 80 minutes, in Arabic)
Following the fall of a dictatorship in Sudan which then became a still-raging civil war, more than 14 million Sudanese have been displaced from their homes — whether within the country or outside of it. The five Sudanese refugees who are featured in Khartoum have all since left the country. To convey their journeys, the experimental documentary brings both drama and sweetness with real-life footage filmed on the ground in Sudan, mixed with reenactments that are bolstered by greenscreen effects and fake backgrounds which the film subjects are placed within.
The overall structure of Khartoum is written and directed by Phil Cox, but individual portraits of the Sudanese refugees are directed by separate filmmakers: Anas Saeed directs the story of young mother and tea stand owner Khadmalla; Rawia Alhag of young friends Lokai and Wilson; Brahim Snoopy of civil servant Majdi; and Timeea Mohamed Ahmed of resistance committee volunteer Jawad.
All five interview subjects speak of loss, death, fear, and violence as they retell their experiences before and during the war. However, each of them also brings levity when they imagine their fantasies — which greenscreen technologies can fully bring to life – as they each serve as actors in one another’s recollections. Khartoum successfully contrasts two polarities: the deep pain caused by war, and the relief to be found in dreaming of something better.
For example, the two young boys, Lokain and Wilson, imagine themselves riding on a lion, though they have never seen one in real life. Yet in another scene, they reveal how they learned to play dead in the face of frequent all-out gunfights between the Sudanese government and the Rapid Support Forces. The other adults stand by, absolutely mind-blown, as the youth playfully describe the ways in which automatic guns are able to fire in all directions.
Meanwhile, civil servant Majdi spoke about how a citizen-led revolution which ousted their old dictator, Omar al-Bashir, felt like a moment of hope that never resulted in the democratic outcome that they had ultimately hoped for. In his fantasies, he imagines flying over Sudan smoking shisha, and is portrayed doing so mounted on a giant bird, among the clouds, with a sunset ombre of pinks, oranges, and greens creating a dreamy backdrop.
Also notable throughout Khartoum is the use of Sudanese music, dance, and cultural iconography to convey the beauty of the culture that the refugees have left behind but still hold in their hearts. At the end of the documentary, an update on each of the participants brings light-heartedness and welcome relief for a topic often too rooted in challenges to be uplifting.
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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