Watermelon Takes Mahdi Fleifel’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Hit ‘To a Land Unknown’ for North America (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comJohn Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Chicago-based Watermelon Pictures has acquired North American distribution rights to Danish-Palestinian writer-director Mahdi Fleifel’s “To a Land Unknown,” which world premiered to extensive acclaim at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
Sold by Salaud Morisset, “To a Land Unknown” saw a P&I screening on Friday at Toronto where it has its North American premiere in Toronto’s Centrepiece showcase, packing an impressive double-punch for Salaud Morisset with a second Centrepiece title, “Under the Volcano,” which it also represents.
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.
When Reda blows their savings on his opiate addiction, Chatila puts together a plan for a dangerous heist. 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.
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