Screened as part of 2024

Green Border 2023

Zielona granica

Directed by Agnieszka Holland

Brutal, enraging and heartrending, Polish writer-director Agnieszka Holland’s controversial take on the Polish-Belarusian border crisis serves as a startling call to arms in the face of a little-seen humanitarian crisis.

Poland In Arabic, English, French and Polish with English subtitles
147 minutes B&W / Colour

Producers

Marcin Wierzchosłąwski, Fred Bernstein, Agnieszka Holland

Screenplay

Maciej Pisuk, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko, Agnieszka Holland

Cinematography

Tomek Naumiuk

Editor

Pavel Hrdlička

Production Designer

Katarzyna Jędrzejczyk

Costume Designer

Katarzyna Lewińska 

Music

Frédéric Vercheval

Cast

Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Behi Djanati Atai, Mohamad Al Rashi, Dalia Naous, Tomasz Włosok

Festivals

Venice, Toronto, New York 2023; Rotterdam, Sydney 2024

Awards

Special Jury Prize, Venice Film Festival 2023
,
Audience Award, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2024

Elsewhere

Agnieszka Holland, a filmmaker with a fascinating body of work that includes collaborating on Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours: Blue, directing episodes of The Wire and winning international plaudits for films such as Europa Europa, has rarely been as strident or unflinching as with Green Border, a sprawling and terrifying depiction of the humanitarian crisis unfolding on the borders of Poland and Belarus. The titular border is in fact a stretch of densely forested territory, into which refugees from various parts of the world are unwillingly made political pawns of the hidden conflict between the European Union and Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian ruler of Belarus. Lured by propaganda of safe passage from Lukashenko, refugees are then bullied, assaulted and otherwise tossed into the freezing and treacherous border territory, only to be rounded up by Polish border guards and tossed back into Belarus, in an endlessly repeating cycle of pain and misery subjected upon some of the world’s most vulnerable citizens.

Captured in stark black and white, Holland weaves together the disparate stories of a family of asylum seekers, a border guard facing a crisis of conscience, aid workers and a psychologist thrown into action when she crosses paths with a pair of refugees on the run. Holland has faced immense backlash in her home country, with government officials decrying the depiction of Polish border police, touching a nerve within a country wrestling with its own responsibilities and history. The film’s epilogue, a startlingly frank reflection of who is permitted asylum and why, is deeply resonant. Green Border can be a tough watch, with violence on either side of the border meted out in unflinching detail, but the persistent thrum of Holland’s outrage is what impacts deepest. In a conflict dedicated to often overwhelming dehumanisation and cruelty, that stirring of empathy within us, the audience, is what is most important to preserve. Tom Augustine