To a Land Unknown by Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel won the Golden Antigone at the 46th Cinemed, the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival.
First shown during the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, the film follows two Palestinian refugees, Chatila and Reda, who are stuck in Athens. Desperately they try to make enough money to buy false passports, their only way to get into Germany where they imagine they will finally be able to build a new life. But the need for money pushes them too far, forcing them to leave behind a part of themselves in the hope of a better future.
The Critics’ Award went to George Sikharulidze’s Panopticon (Georgia) and the Audience Award to Binevsa Berivan’s The Virgin and Child – about a young Kurdish Yazidi woman who escaped from Daesh. She arrives in Brussels with one consuming obsession: to take revenge on the man who enslaved her.
In the short film category, the Grand Prix went to Ali Cherri for The Watchman (Italy/France). Rehab Nazzal’s short documentary Vibrations From Gaza won the Audience Award and the Young Audience Award.
