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Watermelon Takes Mahdi Fleifel’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Hit ‘To a Land Unknown’ for North America (EXCLUSIVE)
Playing Toronto Centrepiece, ‘To a Land Unknown’ marks the narrative feature debut of a Berlin and IDFA winner and BAFTA nominee.
Channeling “the Spirit of ‘Bicycle Thieves,’” Variety said in an upbeat review, “To a Land Unknown” turns on two cousins, Chatila and Reda, raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, who are now stranded in a downbeat neighbourhood of Athens, trying to scrape together – or scam – money for fake passports to get to Germany. In conceiving “To a Land Unknown” far from most recent dramas about immigration, Fleifel told Variety that he wanted to “pay homage” to his favourite cinema, the “early Martin Scorsese” and Brian De Palma 1970s New York films, so crafted a heist thriller set in Greece where the main protagonists aren’t necessarily the good guys. “Rooted in Palestinian culture and creativity, Watermelon Pictures produces, promotes, and cultivates visionary work that educate, entertain and inspire the world to stand up to injustice, celebrate independent voices, and imagine our way into a shared, liberated future,” its boilerplate description runs.
Or read this on Variety
