The film opens with a haunting quotation from Edward Said, a beacon of Palestinian cultural and political thought: “In a way, it’s sort of the fate of Palestinians, not to end up where they started, but somewhere unexpected and far away.” From the very first frame, Mahdi Fleifel’s new film, which he co-wrote and directed, makes clear that it will not offer the viewer a comfortable or tidy narrative. Instead, it plunges us headlong into a world of dislocation, pain, and perseverance—a landscape that mirrors the mental and emotional terrain of its Palestinian protagonists. The place: a dilapidated, forgotten district of Athens, Greece. The people: a pair of young men who do not belong, who do not want to belong, and who are desperate to leave.
Their destination is Germany—not because it’s a promised land, but because it offers a sense of familiarity and family, a semblance of safety, and perhaps the possibility of a future. But reaching it is no simple matter. Without money, connections, or legal documents, even dreams become liabilities. And so they hustle, scheme, and survive in a daily dance of desperation.
The more capable of the two friends is Chatila, played with magnetic force by Mahmoud Bakri. From the moment we meet him, we sense both his toughness and his quiet grief. His actions speak of street smarts, but his eyes betray an old soul worn down by life. His partner in survival is Reda (Aram Sabbah), a friend whose emotional vulnerability is raw and palpable. Reda, tragically, is caught in the grip of heroin addiction. He wants to be clean, tries to be clean, but the streets of Athens offer neither sanctuary nor support.
The film wastes no time plunging into their daily grind. Early on, we witness Chatila snatching the purse of an elderly tourist. He bolts down the street and meets Reda in an alley, triumphantly presenting the loot. But the purse contains only five euros—an amount so meager that it serves more as a metaphor than a reward. Their hopes are large, their needs immense, and their resources almost nonexistent. The film doesn’t judge them—it simply observes them, and in doing so, demands empathy from us.
Fleifel’s camera captures Athens not as a postcard city of culture and history, but as a crumbling limbo. The alleyways, stairwells, tenement buildings, and trash-strewn sidewalks feel suffocating, like they are closing in on the characters. The city becomes a purgatory of sorts—a space between life and death, between home and nowhere. For Palestinians like Chatila and Reda, statelessness isn’t a concept—it’s a daily reality. They’re alive, yes, but without a place in the world, they’re perpetually unmoored.
Things grow more complicated with the arrival of Malik, a 13-year-old boy without parents, family, or even a reliable roof over his head. Played by Mohammed Alsurafa, Malik is astonishingly composed, never indulging in the kind of saccharine precocity that lesser films assign to children in tragic circumstances. He’s just a kid—but a kid forced into adulthood far too soon. Chatila’s initial reaction is guarded, but it doesn’t take long for his protective instincts to kick in. Underneath his gruff exterior, he’s a man deeply moved by the suffering of others, especially children.
Chatila begins to develop a precarious plan to save them all: get forged passports, find enough money to pay for them, keep Reda from spiraling further into addiction, and figure out a way to get Malik out of Greece. The plan is more fantasy than blueprint, but it’s all they’ve got. And Chatila clings to it with a tenacity that borders on desperation.
He approaches a shady local forger to arrange the papers. The deal is simple: money up front, and he’ll provide new identities. But that money is nowhere in sight. So Chatila does what he knows—he hustles. He reaches out to Malik’s aunt in Italy and pleads for financial help. At the same time, he strikes up a shaky alliance with Tatiana, a Greek woman who seems to exist on the margins of society herself. Once a vibrant spirit, Tatiana now lives a life steeped in loneliness and neglect. In another time, she might’ve been derisively labeled “slatternly,” but here, she’s portrayed with tragic dignity.
Tatiana is drawn to Chatila—whether out of genuine affection, mutual need, or loneliness is hard to say. But their connection feels real. Chatila, ever the charmer when survival is on the line, manages to enlist her in his scheme to get Malik out of Athens. She agrees to help, though her motivations remain hazy. This subplot offers the film a rare moment of tenderness—though not without its own painful undertones.
Throughout the film, Chatila becomes both caregiver and schemer, protector and liar, friend and manipulator. He juggles these conflicting roles with visible strain. Every decision he makes is filtered through layers of obligation—to Reda, to Malik, to himself, and to an undefined sense of duty to his people. His life has become a negotiation between principle and necessity, heart and hustle.
In one particularly revealing scene, Chatila tells Reda, “This is the last shit we pull here.” It’s a line we’ve heard before in countless crime dramas, but here it lands with fresh weight. The weariness in his voice tells us this isn’t just a dramatic beat—it’s a man running out of road. The film earns its moments of cliché by grounding them in specificity. This isn’t a generic story of outlaws; it’s a painfully particular story about people pushed to the margins by a world that has no place for them.
Fleifel deepens the narrative with brief but potent references to Palestinian poetry and philosophy. The quote from Edward Said sets the tone, while a later line from poet Mahmoud Darwish echoes through the film like a lament: “You have no brothers, my brother, friends my friend, you have no castles.” These lines are not just poetic flourishes—they are emotional anchor points, reminders of cultural legacy and identity. They frame the story not just as a tale of survival, but as one of profound existential loss.
Despite the bleakness of their circumstances, Fleifel resists sentimentality. His direction is restrained, even austere. He doesn’t indulge in grand gestures or overt moralizing. The film’s emotional power lies in its quiet observations—the flicker of disappointment on a child’s face, the tremble in Reda’s hand as he resists temptation, the look in Chatila’s eyes as he contemplates what he’s becoming.
The performances are uniformly excellent. Mahmoud Bakri’s portrayal of Chatila is especially moving. He carries the weight of the film on his shoulders, embodying a man who has seen too much, lost too much, and yet still dares to hope. His eyes communicate volumes—pain, resolve, affection, fear. It’s a performance that doesn’t shout but resonates deeply.
Aram Sabbah brings vulnerability and humanity to Reda, making him more than a stock junkie character. We see his pain, his efforts, and his failures. His relationship with Chatila is layered—part brotherhood, part burden, part lost cause. It is one of the film’s most affecting dynamics.
And young Mohammed Alsurafa, as Malik, is a revelation. His performance never veers into melodrama. He is both tough and tender, a survivor in the making, yet still unmistakably a child. There’s a moment when Malik silently watches Chatila argue with Reda, and the look in his eyes captures a lifetime of heartbreak. It’s the kind of performance that lingers.
Fleifel’s film doesn’t end with a sweeping resolution. Instead, it closes on a note of stark, sobering reality—an homage to a bygone era of cinema when stories dared to reflect life’s harsh truths rather than comfort audiences with neat conclusions. The reference, subtle yet unmistakable, adds a final layer of gravitas to the film. It’s a nod not just to cinematic tradition but to artistic integrity—a refusal to flinch in the face of pain.
In the end, this film is a searing portrait of what it means to be dispossessed. It is about Palestinians, yes—but also about anyone who has been pushed to the edges, stripped of belonging, and forced to keep moving forward even when there’s nowhere left to go. It’s a story about the cost of survival, the weight of loyalty, and the fierce fragility of hope.
Mahdi Fleifel has crafted a film of extraordinary empathy and unflinching realism. It doesn’t ask for your pity. It demands your attention.
