75East Signs Palestinian Filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel

EXCLUSIVE: Dubai-based management and production company 75East has signed Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel, whose narrative feature debut To A Land Unknown is playing in Directors’ Fortnight this year.

75East, was launched last December by former Mister Smith sales executive Antone Saliba under the banner Untamed Talent with a focus on the SWANA region (South West Asia and North Africa), and has recently rebranded.

The only Palestinian feature in Cannes this year, To A Land Unknown tells the story of the desperate attempts of two Palestinian cousins stranded in Athens to find a way to reach Germany.

Chatila and Reda are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of Athens. When Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan, which involves them posing as smugglers and taking hostages in an effort to get him and his best friend out of their hopeless environment before it is too late.

Fleifel is a Palestinian director who grew up in Denmark and currently lives and works between Denmark, the UK, and Greece. He studied Fiction Directing in the UK under Stephen Frears and Pawel Pawlikowski.

His filmography includes 2012 doc feature A World Not Ours, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and went on to play at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Berlinale Peace Prize.

Fleifel took part in the Cannes Cinéfondation in 2013 and subsequently directed several high-profile short films, including A Man Returned, which received the Silver Bear in Berlin in 2016, A Drowning Man, which screened at Cannes 2017 and earned a Bafta nomination, and I Signed the Petition which won the Best Short Documentary Award at IDFA in 2018.

Further SWANA talents represented by 75East include Palme d’Or-nominee Abu Bakr Shawky (Yomeddine, Hajjan); Oscar-nominee and BAFTA-winner Bassel Ghandour (Theeb, The Alleys); Amjad Al Rasheed (Inshallah A Boy); Firas Khoury (Alam, Maradona’s Legs); Faris Alrjoob (The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry); Yassmina Karajah (Rupture), and Mayar Al Nouri, creator and director of Self Modulation, an upcoming Arabic-language Amazon Originals limited series.