Documentary maker Mahdi Fleifel’s first feature about two Palestinian refugees stranded in Athens is an intense thriller with high moral stakes.
Cousins Chatila and Reda dream of opening a café in Germany. For now, they’re reduced to begging, borrowing and grifting their way through the city streets to raise money for fake passports. But when Reda loses their stash to his drug addiction, it barrels them towards a knife-edge scheme to make one big score and get out. Painting refugees as neither victims, martyrs nor saints, this modern neorealist tale that recalls Bicycle Thieves and Midnight Cowboy is a powerful exercise in wringing extreme tension from the most human of impulses: to live in safety, to bring comfort to ourselves and our families.
