Mahdi Fleifel on His Scorsese-Inspired Palestinian Refugee Thriller ‘To a Land Unknown’

variety.com:

Alex Ritman Mahdi Fleifel’s debut feature, the documentary “A World Not Ours,” proved to be an unexpected festival hit back in 2012.

A warm, often humorous and deeply compassioned study of the Ein El-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp in South Lebanon (where Fleifel was born), and of the frustrations of a stateless generation of young men with no homeland and little prospects except join the growing number of refugees trying to enter Europe, the film won numerous awards around the world.

Fleifel has made several short films since “A World Not Ours,” but 12 years on he’s finally back with another feature. “To a Land Unknown” had its premiere in Cannes (as the only Palestinian film in the lineup), but is now set to close the Galway Film Fleadh on July 13, which has made Palestine its country of focus this year.

And while it marks Fleifel’s narrative debut, the story of “To a Land Unknown” almost continues on from his award-winning documentary, following two young Palestinian refugees stranded in Athens and desperate to reach Germany. “The idea for this film really came around 2011 when I went to Athens for the first time to follow my friend who was in ‘A World Not Ours,’” he explains. “But when I arrived there it was like a whole new version of ‘A World Not Ours’ opened up, with these Palestinian refugees, mostly young men who had tried to leave the camps in Lebanon and Syria and make it to Europe.” Fleifel says he was initially inspired by the 1962 novel “Men in the Sun,” in which a group of Palestinian refugees leave their refugee camps to work in Kuwait, but end up stranded in the desert. “And I just thought, Athens is this new urban desert.