Conic and Wildcard have jointly acquired UK and Ireland rights for Palestinian-Danish director Mahdi Fleifel’s first fiction feature, To a Land Unknown ahead of its UK premiere at BFI London Film Festival on Friday 11 October. Conic will release in England, Scotland and Wales, with Wildcard releasing in Ireland.
The film premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes and has since played at many festivals including TIFF, Shanghai, Melbourne and San Sebastian and has picked up awards including the CineCoPro top prize at Munich Film Festival. Conic and Wildcard acquired the film from sales agent Salaud Morisset.
The stakes couldn’t be higher for displaced Palestinian refugees Chatila and Reda in this knife-edge drama. The cousins are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of Athens, but when Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan to pose as smugglers in an attempt to get them out of their desperate situation before it is too late.
Mahdi Fleifel is a Palestinian-Danish director who graduated from NFTS in the UK. In 2012, his first feature-length documentary A World Not Ours premiered at TIFF and gathered around thirty awards (Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Yamagata, DOC:NYC). He took part in the Cinéfondation in 2013, and subsequently directed several short films: A Man Returned (Silver Bear 2016 EFA nomination), A Drowning Man (Cannes, Bafta nominated), I Signed The Petition (IDFA award and EFA nomination).
To a Land Unknown is a European co-production between Geoff Arbourne of the UK’s Inside Out Films and Fleifel’s Nakba Filmworks, François Morisset for France and Germany’s Salaud Morisset, Maria Drandaki for Greece’s Homemade Films, and Layla Meijman and Maarten van der Ven for the Netherlands’ Studio Ruba.
The other co-producers are ERT, Metafora Production and the Red Sea Fund. The film was supported by the Greek Film Center, the NFF+HBF co-production scheme, CNC’s Aide au Cinéma du Monde, ZDF/Arte, ZDF/DKF and the Doha Film Institute. To a Land Unknown has previously sold to Eurozoom for France, Film-Clinic for MENA and Watermelon Pictures for North America. Conic and Wildcard will release in UK and Ireland in early 2025.
About Wildcard Distribution
Established in early 2013, Wildcard is currently Ireland’s most successful film distributor having released the biggest Irish titles of the last few years including Kneecap, Black 47, The Young Offenders, Cardboard Gangsters, Deadly Cuts and the Oscar nominated animation Wolfwalkers. The Wildcard slate includes a wide range of genres including award-winning dramas, horrors, comedies, family films and documentaries.
For more information: Website www.wildcarddistribution.com
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About Conic
Conic is a UK/Ireland distributor that loves incredible films. www.conic.film
