Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and Reda (Aram Sabbah) are Palestinian cousins hopelessly stranded in Athens in Mahdi Fleifel’s compelling, tightly plotted, yet ultimately heart-breaking exploration of the migrant experience. Chatila, the more resourceful of the two, is saving every penny to realise his dream of opening a café in Germany, the ‘real Europe’, as he puts it, while trying to prevent his cousin from succumbing to a nascent drug addiction. They pair also act as guardians to Malik, a boy left in Greece without any parents, trying to get to his aunt in Italy. When circumstances conspire to make their position even more precarious, Chatila hatches an ambitious plan, which involves them posing as smugglers and taking hostages to get him and his best friend out of their hopeless environment before it is too late.

Notes by David O’Mahony.