THE PERSUASIVE CINEMA OF EXODUS

MAHDI Fleife's debut feature To A Land Unknown begins with a quote from Palestinian American scholar Edward Said: "In a way, it's sort of the fate of Palestinians not to end up where they started, but somewhere unexpected and far away.

- NAMRATA JOSHI

"It sums up the destiny of Chatila and Reda, the protagonists of the film that premiered at Cannes.

Having been displaced from their own country and unable to feel a sense of belonging in a refugee camp in Lebanon, they move further to Athens in Greece, intent on travelling onwards to Germany with the dream of seeking asylum and setting up a café there. But it's not easy for their fancy to turn real.

Away from their families, undocumented, exploited, confined to their own shabby, underprivileged Arab ghetto, taking to petty crime, drugs, theft and trafficking, waiting to get illegal identity papers, they decide to take an extreme measure to flee to freedom. But is freedom so easy to find? Will Athens stop being the interminable stopover in the ongoing journey to the eventual rest and refuge? Or will it be like the Palestinian icon Mahmoud Darwish's poem that one of them recites: "Besiege your siege... there is no escape."