Conic and Wildcard Distribution have jointly acquired UK-Ireland rights to Mahdi Fleifel’s To A Land Unknown, ahead of its UK premiere at BFI London Film Festival on Friday, October 11.
Conic will release the film in England, Scotland and Wales, with Wildcard releasing the film in Ireland, both in early 2025. The distributors acquired the film from sales agent Salaud Morisset.
To A Land Unknown follows two Palestinian refugees saving for fake passports to get out of Athens. When one loses their cash to his drug addiction, the other hatches a plan to pose as smugglers and escape their situation.
Palestinian-Danish filmmaker Fleifel’s fiction feature debut premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes this year, and has since played at Toronto, Shanghai, Melbourne, San Sebastian, Munich, Helsinki and Galway, winning Best Film in the World Cinema Competition at the latter.
The film is a co-production between Geoff Arbourne of the UK’s Inside Out Films and Fleifel’s Nakba Filmworks, Francois Morisset for France and Germany’s Salaud Morisset, Maria Drandaki for Greece’s Homemade Films, and Layla Meijman and Maarten van der Ven for the Netherlands’ Studio Ruba.
The film was backed by the Greek Film Center, the NFF+HBF co-production scheme, the CNC’s Aide au Cinema du Monde, ZDF/Arte, ZDF/DKF and the Doha Film Institute.
Previous deals include France (Eurozoom), MENA (Film-Clinic) and North America (Watermelon Pictures).
A graduate of the UK’s National Film and Television School, Fleifel’s first feature-length documentary A World Not Ours premiered at Toronto in 2012.
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