This somber, sometimes frankly grueling movie opens with a quote from the cultural critic and historian Edward Said: “In a way, it’s sort of the fate of Palestinians, not to end up where they started, but somewhere unexpected and far away.” This drama, directed and co-written by Mahdi Fleifel, sets its Palestinian characters in a rundown sector of Athens, Greece. The protagonists don’t want to be there; they’re trying to get to Germany, where there’s a community and family. But it’s complicated. It costs money. And they’ve not got money.
So the more capable of the two, Chatila, resorts to all manner of misbehavior to get his hands on some. No sooner are we introduced to him and his friend Reda than Chatila snatches the purse of an old lady tourist. He tears off down an alley and prepares to share his loot with Reda. All it amounts to is five Euros.
Clearly, something extra is called for in the resourcefulness department. An early snarl comes in the form of Malik, a thirteen-year-old with no home or family. Chatila is a real softie underneath it all and is soon devising a way out for the kid, too. But Reda is anchoring Chatila, because he’s a junkie who’s trying, and failing, to get clean.
So here’s his agenda: Keep Reda off dope. Negotiate with the local passport forger to get papers for himself, his pal, and now for Malik. Get the damn money for those passports. He concocts a dicey scheme. “This is the last shit we pull here,” he tells Reda. You’ve heard that in a hundred movies before, I’m sure. It rings true here because of the punishing specificity of the setting and the characters’ circumstances. When Chatila meets an Athens native, Tatiana, a lonely woman who in a different time would be derided as “slatternly,” he charms her and inveigles her to assist in a scheme to get Malik out of Athens; but naturally he tries to convince Malik’s aunt in Italy to forward him some dough first. Like the song says (not that it appears in this movie, just to be clear), “Every day I’m hustlin’, hustlin’, hustlin’.” And like the poet Mahmoud Darwish says, “You have no brothers, my brother, friends my friend, you have no castles.” And this quote DOES come up in the film’s dialogue.
Mahmoud Bakri is splendid as Chatila, setting his jaw hard as he tries to keep his situation together even as his heart keeps getting broken. As Reda, Aram Sabbah is heartbreakingly vulnerable. And Mohammed Alsurafa as Malik manages to be adorable while altogether eschewing child-actor cutesiness.
The sobering note on which the movie ends recalls a stone-cold classic from a sadly long-gone era of moviemaking. The homage actually functions as a token of this movie’s integrity and heartfelt sadness.
