Already a Festival veteran, Mahdi Fleifel — widely celebrated for A World Not Ours (TIFF Docs ’12) and A Drowning Man (TIFF Short Cuts ’17) — returns with his narrative feature debut, an intuitive thriller about displaced cousins who will stop at nothing for a reliable path out of purgatory. Emerging first as a loose adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani’s 1962 novella Men in the Sun, Fleifel’s latest project is effectively a narrative extension of his 2012 documentary, which ends with the film’s subjects in Greece.

Stranded in a bleak, overcrowded neighbourhood in Athens, cousins Chatila — played by a transformed Mahmood Bakri (Alam, TIFF ’22; The Teacher, TIFF ’23) — and Reda (newcomer Aram Sabbah) are endlessly plotting their escape. Coming from a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, the best friends, raised more like brothers, search for a life that offers more than displacement. To save money for fake passports, the men carry out petty scams, their intention to get to Germany where Chatila aspires to open a café and Reda dreams of protecting it. But when Reda dumps their savings on his opiate addiction, Chatila is forced to escalate, concocting a high-risk heist that will have them posing as smugglers.

Filmed weightlessly by Thodoros Mihopoulos (known for his work on TIFF ’19 selection Entwined), To a Land Unknown lends a transformed quality to stories about forced migration, where exile takes new shapes and gives “killing time” renewed meaning.

NATALEAH HUNTER-YOUNG

Content advisory: drug use; mature themes; violence