Visiting Galway Film Fleadh for the screening of his new feature film was a homecoming of sorts for Danish-Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel. Reared in a refiugee camp in Lebanon before his family were granted asylum in Denmark when he was nine, the award-winning director tells JUDY MURPHY about his background, his love of film and why he will always make work about being an exile.

When director Mahdi Fleifel was invited to this year’s Galway Film Fleadh for the screening of his film, To a Land Unknown, his mother was delighted.

She told him: ‘You must go to Ireland. These are our people.’

Like any good son, Mahdi followed his mother’s advice, travelling from Athens to Galway to participate in a post-screening interview about the gritty, hard-hitting film, which closed this year’s Fleadh and which won the World Cinema Award alongside The Old Bachelor.

The Danish-Palestinian film director wasn’t long here when he realised what his mother meant.

He was already aware of Ireland’s support for the Palestinian people who have suffered deeply since the state of Israel was established in 1948. Meeting people here who knew of Palestine’s history and who weren’t afraid to call out Israel’s appalling behaviour in a world that largely shies away from doing so, was refreshing.

Then, To a Land Unknown which is Mahdi’s first full-length feature, won the Fleadh’s International prize, following its success in Cannes in May, when it won the Directors’ Fortnight Film – it was the only Palestinian film to be shown at the renowned French festival.

To a Land Unknown follows Palestinian cousins, Chatila and Reda, who are living in Athens, having moved there from Lebanon. Their ultimate destination is Germany and they’re saving to buy fake passports so they can get there. But Reda is a drug addict and when he spends their hard-earned money feeding his addiction, Chatila concocts a mad plan. They’ll become people smugglers.

The film was written by Mahdi, along with Irish writer Jason McColgan and Fyzal Boulifa.

To A Land Unknown explores themes around exile as it depicts the dreams, hopes and fears of these Palestinian men. Exile is a subject close to Mahdi’s heart.

“My dad, who was the youngest of 11, was born in a tent in 1952,” he says of his late father whose family were forced to flee Palestine in 1948. The director’s mother was born some years later in a refugee camp in South Lebanon, in less awful conditions, but still in exile.

“When I look at my privileged life in Copenhagen, in my apartment with my books and art and think of my father being born in a tent . . .” Mahdi shakes his head.

He was born in Dubai and was nine when the family received asylum in Denmark and, as he explains how his father tried and failed at several businesses there, it seems like the older man struggled in their new home.

Pictured: Director Mahdi Fleifel on set in Athens, where the film, which won the World Cinema Competition at Galway Film Fleadh this month was filmed.