100
Original-Cin by Liam Lacey
To a Land Unknown is unquestionably topical. It’s also rooted in a well-known movie tradition, films that are empathetic portraits of low-level urban criminals struggling for survival and dignity.
To a Land Unknown (Vers un pays inconnu)
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Greece,
- Denmark,
- United Kingdom,
- Netherlands,
- Occupied Palestinian Territory
- 2025
- · 105m
Director
Mahdi Fleifel
Cast
Mahmood Bakri,
Adam Sabbagh,
Mohammad Alsurafa,
Angeliki Papoulia,
Mouataz Alshalton (Abu Love,
Mohammad Ghassan
Genre
Drama,
Thriller
Two Palestinian cousins in a desperate situation want to buy fake passports so they can leave Athens. When Reda loses the money due to his drug addiction, Chatila comes up with a dangerous plan to pose as smugglers in a last ditch attempt to get him and Reda out of their troubles.
Stream To a Land Unknown
What are critics saying?
91
IndieWire by Sophie Monks Kaufman
To a Land Unknown is a tour-de-force of empathic storytelling, with its genre narrative bursting with an overabundance of humanity.
90
The Film Verdict by Adham Youssef
Fleifel’s influences are many, from 1970’s Hollywood to Palestinian poetry to American novels, as he readily admits in his interviews, but To A Land Unknown is unique in its brutal realism; a heartbreaking tribute to exiled people.
90
Screen Daily by Robert Daniels
Arrestingly plotted and bracingly acted, this story about the biting hardships faced by refugees who have left the danger of their homeland only to be left nationless could hardly be more relevant.
90
Variety by Catherine Bray
To a Land Unknown is a film crafted with tremendous empathy.
90
Screen Rant by Abigail Stevens
It is focused on its small-scale story about the main characters who are burdened by pain and dead-ends, but carefully works in the broader injustices it wants the audience to see.
90
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Roxana Hadadi
To a Land Unknown presents the cousins’ ordeal as something no person should have to go through, something unnatural and surreal and Kafkaesque. But there’s also a creeping devastation in how the film convinces us of their pain and of all the opportunities and chances that were stolen from them through statelessness.
90
Collider by Jasneet Singh
To a Land Unknown paints a brutally honest and empathetic portrait of the lives of Palestinian refugees.
83
The Film Stage by David Katz
With inspiration taken from the somber wave of ’70s American buddy movies, To a Land Unknown will comfortably endear itself to audiences, avoiding anything overly discursive so it can thrive provoking anger and pathos.
83
The A.V. Club by Jacob Oller
In its quiet reflection on the limited choices of those backed into a corner, the drama elegantly conveys how a people’s continued persecution not only starves, shoots, and bombs individuals, but erodes the solidarity of their whole.
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