This film takes you into an Athens unseen by the millions of tourists. It introduces you to people and situations you are fortunate that you are not likely to experience. To a Land Unknown tells the story of two Palestinian migrants desperate to leave their existence in Lebanese refugee camps for a better life in Italy or Germany. Athens is just a staging post but for most of them it becomes a limbo where they remain stuck, unable to find jobs to pay for the documents and passage they need. It can also become a hell where they are scammed by people smugglers, picked up by the police or become addicts.
Chatila (played by Bakri) is the stronger of the pair. Married with a kid back in Lebanon, his dream is to reach Germany and open a café in an Arab quarter with his wife, who is a great cook. Reda (Sabbah) is Chatila’s cousin. His family has entrusted him to Chatila, they know he has problems and there are indications that they do not want him back. The relationship between the two is the beating heart of the story. At one point Chatila chucks him out because he used the money he has saved to buy drugs. Despite everything he keeps his promise to look after him right to the end.
Dream of a better future
At regular points the two of them go over their dream of the café and the roles they will play. Capitalist society continually drums home this idea of following your dreams, making your own future, an individual entrepreneurship. But of course it is just ideology, by definition only a few make it and it is particularly hard if you are excluded as not being part of a designated nation.
Since they are not very successful as petty thieves they look for other ways of raising the money they need. A young Palestinian orphan turns up. They befriend him and Chatila sees an opportunity once he finds out that this kid has an aunt in Italy who is prepared to pay her nephew’s passage. He needs someone who can pass as the kid’s mother. An earlier encounter has put him in touch with a Greek woman. She has a drink problem and needs money. Chatila starts a relationship and convinces her to do the job.
The plot pivots entirely on the fact that we never find out what happens to Tatiana and the child. The plot is well paced and keeps the viewer on the edge of their seats, will they make it? The complete silence on Tatiana and the child is a masterstroke that goes counter to conventional film narrative. Also it is entirely realistic – so many stories and deaths of migrants are untold and unrecorded.
Ripped off again as no money arrives from the aunt, Chatila hatches a plan that will scam fellow migrants. Right the way through the violent denouement a certain self awareness and shame at what they are doing is very tangible. The director shows you how desperate social situations change people’s behavior in bad ways. There is no way out, limbo becomes hell.
Myths about migrants
Such a film restores humanity, warts and all, to the labels of migrant or ‘illegal’. It also cuts through the myth peddled by Starmer and the Labour government that the whole issue of migration can be reduced to focusing on the evil people smugglers now defined as ‘terrorist’. As the movie shows, migrants can temporarily become people smugglers. The problem of criminals and the small boats would be practically eliminated if there were safe and legal routes and Britain followed the international rules on welcoming refugees. Just the other day Starmer loudly condemned the loophole that allowed a Palestinian family to get asylum by their lawyers using the Ukrainian family resettlement framework. As if the reality of a flattened Gaza and the 50,000 plus deaths at the hands of the Israeli army is not enough of an argument.
We do not argue the case for migrants’ right to settle in Britain on the basis of how useful they are to the economy. Socialists reject borders and identify with an international community of workers rather than with the bosses and rulers in their own countries.
However two articles in today’s Guardian (18th Feb) show that it is quite wrong to argue that migrants are some sort of burden on society or the economy. One reported how economists have recognized the more progressive migrant policy of the Sanchez government in the Spanish State has contributed to a much better economic growth there than in the rest of Europe. The other showed how without immigration there will be a big negative increase in the relationship between the working and dependent population in European countries – which will lead to pressure for big tax increases.
Capitalism pits worker against worker
To a Land Unknown is quite unsentimental too in the way it portrays the divisions between working people. The mainstream parties and particularly the right wing – amplified by the media – continually pit ‘respectable’ workers against the unemployed, sick or disabled. So Starmer echoes former Tory ministers with his rubbish about opposing living on welfare as a ‘lifestyle’ choice. Of course ‘British workers’ are pitted against migrants or all foreigners who are supposedly taking away jobs and homes. As though any worker was better off back in the day when there was little immigration. Do workers today in Devon and other places with low immigration enjoy some better standard of living or housing?
The director has built his story using a similar narrative to one of the great progressive Hollywood movies – Midnight Cowboy (1969) with Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. Like Chatila and Reda they had a dream of living in Florida, eating oranges off the trees. It showed the American Dream was a myth. The buddy dynamic worked well with that movie so why not use it again? The final iconic scene of Midnight Cowboy is remade in this film. Hopefully it will make the movie more accessible to the cinema going public.
We should publicize this movie widely. The Palestine Solidarity campaign structures provide us with a ready platform. Labour Cabinet members might learn something if they were ever bothered to watch such progressive films. The good news is that the film is being distributed globally in many countries. .