Mohammad Alsurafa

To a Land Unknown (2024) doesn’t really hold your hand or sugarcoat anything—it just throws you into the chaos, and, honestly, that’s kind of the whole point. Mohammad Alsurafa brings this raw, almost feverish energy to the screen, following characters who are absolutely desperate for a way out of their lives. You’re not getting a neat little journey with inspirational speeches and tidy endings. Nope. It’s messy, it’s painful, and it feels all too real. The story orbits around two cousins, wandering across borders—physically, emotionally, you name it—trying to escape the suffocating grip of the world they’re stuck in. They’re chasing Europe, but really, they’re just chasing freedom, dignity, anything that doesn’t feel like a dead end. The road? Brutal. You see the ugly side of migration: the scams, the betrayals, the long cold nights huddling in some dingy squat, wondering if tomorrow brings hope or just another disappointment. Alsurafa doesn’t give you any easy heroes. The cousins screw up, they lie, they fight, and sometimes they’re just plain unlikeable. But you get it. Survival isn’t pretty, and the film leans hard into that. There are flashes of dark humor, moments where you almost forget how dire everything is, and then—snap—you’re right back in it. It hits you with the quiet heartbreak of people who just want to live, not just exist. The ending doesn’t tie things up with a bow, either. It lingers, unsettled, just like real life.