To a Land Unknown5 Images
In a neglected back building in an unheralded Athens neighbourhood, two young men lie on a bare mattress in a busy basement full of occupied bunk beds. The living conditions are tight and the room is dark with a musty light creeping in. We see Reda (Aram Sabbah) and his cousin Chatila (Mahmood Bakri). They’re both undocumented Palestinian refugees living a precarious day-to-day existence. Neither is happy in Greece, the supposed ‘gateway to Europe’. Both dream of Germany, of opening a cafe in an Arab neighbourhood, of a quiet and simple life. Reda, an occasional heroin user, is on a comedown. He thinks of his mother back home in Palestine and of the hot meramiyeh tea she would make him, and he wishes more than ever to return: “at least I’d die in peace,” he laments.
Mahdi Fleifel’s new film, To a Land Unknown, focuses on these two lives in exile and how far they stretch and snap back without breaking. The movie was nearly never made. Conceived as a documentary due to lack of funding, the project slowly morphed into a narrative film. Despite this, the decision to shoot on 16mm gives the film a true-to-life feel, something Fleifel, whose previous work has been in short film, dubs a “fusion of cinema and documentary.” This is not just a Palestinian film, or a film about Palestine and Palestinians, it’s an ode to 70s Hollywood thrillers. Think Sidney Lumet, Michael Mann and William Friedkin. It’s tough and real; a refugee tale in the mould of Midnight Cowboy.
Reda and Chatila have found their way to Athens via the Ein El Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon, where they’re stealing to survive. Reda engages in occasional sex work. They need money to get out, attempting to procure fake passports from Marwan, a local people smuggler. They make acquaintances along the way. The cousins build a friendship with Malik, a 13-year-old kid from Gaza. Scammed by smugglers, he was dumped in Greece on the way to his aunt in Italy. Chatila gets entangled with Tatiana, a local Greek woman with uncertain motivations.
To a Land Unknown is Aram Sabbah’s first big acting role. The Dazed100 alumnus and former GQ Middle East Man of the Year is usually found working as a manager at SkatePal, a charity which encourages Palestinian youth to skateboard. Sabbah’s Reda is the film’s moral centre and the embodiment of empathy in a sea of chaos. This is in stark contrast to Chatila, a hard-headed realist who wants out of their situation by any means necessary. Reda’s instinct is to offer kindness in the face of indignity. Both will have to sacrifice something to escape.
Aram spoke to us from Ramallah in the West Bank to chat about To a Land Unknown, his inspiration for Reda, and the problem with European film festivals.
Tell me about To a Land Unknown.
Aram Sabbah: The film is about exile, specifically the exile of two cousins, Reda and Chatila. They go to Athens and they do whatever they can to get money and find their way to Germany. Reda is addicted to heroin and spends the money they saved for the trip on drugs, so they have to come up with a new plan to get out of Athens. It shows the Palestinian in a different way. It doesn’t show them in the weak and pathetic way that people often try and portray them – it shows a different side of the Palestinian in exile.
How did you land the role in the film?
Aram Sabbah: I knew Mahdi Fleifel [director] before from his documentaries, he visited Ramallah years ago and I got to know him on a personal level. Mahdi actually contacted me three days before shooting began on To a Land Unknown because the Jordanian actor they had for the role couldn’t get a visa. Originally the character’s name was different. One of my conditions was to change the name and Mahdi picked the name Reda because in one of his documentaries there’s a real person named Reda that faced the same things that Reda in the film faced. This made it more sensitive for Mahdi and I kind of obtained that sensitivity from Mahdi.
How did you find acting in a feature film for the first time?
Aram Sabbah: I love it man, but it takes a lot of your mental health. I got confused between the character and me. I was pulling things from my emotional state in trying to portray him. After you finish the film you still have this entanglement with the character. Also to be filmed on 16mm film made it way more interesting. I wanted to be in this film whatever happened.
I had to sneak in my keffiyeh and bring it out on the red carpet. I don’t want to meet famous people who aren’t standing up for me
Was there any process behind the scenes for you?
Aram Sabbah: It might sound cheesy but no, I think it was natural because I joke around a lot. I winged it most of the time, and working with Mahdi as a documentary director gave me this freedom. I’m not sure any other director would have given me the space to improvise and the space to just fly. Many scenarios in the film are built on youth and all of us are the same age, it’s more playful, just fucking around. He [Mahdi] sees something that we fuck around with with offset and he’s like, ‘all right, use this, put it in the film. Let’s see it.’ And we did see it.
Some of those scenes are the sweetest in the film. There seemed to be a real friendship between you. What was it like working with Mohammad Alsurafa, who plays Malik, and acting opposite a kid?
Aram Sabbah: I think he’s better than me at acting [laughs]. He was genuine. When we met him, we had a week of getting to know him and playing with him and acting like normal friends. He had a rough time coming from Gaza to Athens, he had to go through all the things that we portrayed in the film. For a kid to go through that, it makes you grow and Malik was great.
Did you like filming in Athens?
Aram Sabbah: I had never been to Athens before. Me and Mahmood Bakri [who plays Chatila] lived in Kypseli during filming, it’s a rough neighborhood, there’s diversity and there’s drug addicts. We had to live there for a month during the film and Mahmood and I were optimistic about this. It reminded us about Palestine and how rough Palestine is. We went out, we saw people, we sat at coffee shops, we observed, we tried to feel the energy, the habitat of Athens and Kypseli specifically. That helped us.
It sounds like you developed a real world chemistry with Mahmood.
Aram Sabbah: I was excited to meet this guy because I’ve heard good things. I know the whole Bakri family, they’re the best actors that Palestine can offer. We still talk to each other and we developed this close friendship. He’s calm, he’s not like his character Chatila. When we revised the script together, he always gave me directions, he was like a guardian angel.
You also starred alongside other experienced actors such as Angeliki Papoulia, who’s starred in three Yorgos Lanthimos films, and Mondher Rayahneh. Did you learn much from them?
Aram Sabbah: It’s amazing, it’s like you play football and then Ronaldo comes on to play with you [laughs]. You see how they switch from themselves to the character in a matter of seconds. That was scary to watch, to see how they manoeuvre themselves. You can learn from them with small details: a small smile, a wink or a shift of sound. That’s just a spice that they have.
The film was selected for Cannes, how did you find it going to those types of film festivals for the first time?
Aram Sabbah: It’s all bollocks [laughs]. It’s all just shows and ties. For us, representing Palestine at Cannes was the best thing. With the genocide that’s happening in Gaza, it felt ten times harder. It felt like a mountain on our shoulders to represent Palestine. On the red carpet you can’t have a keffiyeh or a Palestinian flag. I was like, fuck that. I’m bringing my keffiyeh. I had to sneak in my keffiyeh and bring it out on the red carpet. I don’t want to meet famous people who aren’t standing up for me. I don’t want to be part of this community that just neglects what is actually happening. The way you act for your platform changes things, when people do that I really respect them.
Do you want to keep acting?
Aram Sabbah: Of course. I love acting and I think if I do it more, I’ll get better. And I don’t want to do one character. In the Arab world, I see a lot of people playing the same character over and over in different films. I want to be diverse. I want to have this confidence within myself to play other characters. I want to try. Maybe I will fail, maybe I’m not the best, but I do feel that I have this trust that I can do this naturally. The film is going to be screened in the UK and other countries, maybe something will come up. My main focus now is skateboarding. We [SkatePal] want to build a skate park in Ramallah for the kids, this comes as a priority for us.
Anything else you want to add?
Aram Sabbah: If you’re reading this and feel intrigued about Palestine, please come visit. It’s not safe, but it’s safe at the same time. Come and see the people. We’re really nice. We’re not people who hate life. We love life. We want to live. We’re not as we’re portrayed in the films. We don’t have AKs, we’re not always getting killed.
To a Land Unknown is released across select cinemas in the UK from February 14
