Acclaimed documentarian Mahdi Fleifel makes his fiction debut with a Midnight Cowboy–inspired Palestinian refugee story.

Twentysomething Palestinian cousins Chatila and Reda have spent their lives in exile. Currently in Athens, they hustle to make enough money for passage to Germany, where they plan to open a café and send for Chatila’s wife and child, who remain in a refugee camp. When the young men meet orphaned 13-year-old Malik, also Palestinian, they temporarily set aside their own plans to help get the boy to his aunt in Italy. But Reda’s backslide into addiction and Chatila’s increasingly desperate actions to save them all threaten to dismantle everything they’re fighting for.

Fleifel has made a career documenting the Palestinian refugee experience. The multiple-award-winning A World Not Ours (MIFF 2013) bolted together his extensive video diaries from a childhood spent in the Ain al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon; it was followed by several shorts focusing on the contemporary plight of asylum seekers in Greece. This immersive knowledge gives Fleifel’s first foray away from nonfiction an unvarnished authenticity, rendered even more powerful by use of gritty 16mm stock and the deft performances from leads Mahmood Bakri and Aram Sabbah. Leaning in to the moral complexity of his characters’ situation, Fleifel has crafted something truly special.

“Fleifel’s masterful feature debut marks a new chapter in Palestinian cinema with its harsh yet empathetic walk in the brutal world of being a Palestinian refugee.” – The Film Verdict