GREEN BORDER/ ZIELONA GRANICA, Poland, 2023. Starring Jalal Altawill, Maja Ostaszewska, Behi Djanati Atai, Tomasz Wlosok. Directed by Agnieszka Holland. 152 minutes. Rated M (Mature themes and coarse language).
Here is a sombre and demanding film. Demands which should be made on world audiences, considering the events dramatised here, from October 2021 to the epilogue on 22 February 2022, the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
For a moment, before the opening credits, there is an aerial shot of green trees – but, then 150 minutes of sombre images and issues in stark black and white. This film was co-written and directed by veteran Polish director, Holland, who has been making films for almost 50 years, in her native Poland in communist times, and moving into Western Europe and many films and contributions to television series in the US. Holland clearly identifies with the issues raised here.
For almost 40 harrowing minutes, we initially share some hopes with a Syrian family, refugees for Sweden, flown into Belarus, but becoming political and military pawns on the Belarus/Polish border, maltreated by border police on each side, and tipped, literally, over the border and back, a reminder that brutal and inhumane guards were not limited to the Polish concentration camps of World War II. We get to know the family well, parents, two children and a baby, an old grandfather, devout Muslim, a teacher. On the plane they meet a refugee from Afghanistan, an older woman, Leila, who joins them in their quest, victim of people smugglers, in their most unrelieved sufferings, a strong character with whom we can identify, especially in her subsequent fate.
The action then switches to the border guards, the political imperatives on both sides. Government authorities not wanting the refugees, guards with a sense of duty but also the callously carefree attitude towards life, including their own. However, one guard whose wife is pregnant, witnesses what happens – and his conscience is stirred.
Then there is a chapter on the activists, earnest and committed men and women living near the border who are aware of what is going on, being forbidden to go into an ‘exclusive zone’, trying to rescue the refugees or to secretly bring them some kind of comfort and healing. There is a focus on a psychiatrist who is moved by the situation, volunteers to help, finds herself as the target of the border guards.
While there is some hope, some humanity in key characters, the film is a reminder that in the 2020s, savage wars are still fought around the world, invasions, civil wars, starvation, the desperate need for peace.
And, as mentioned, the film ends at the Ukraine/Poland border, and the information that Poland had received two million refugees from Ukraine – and the sad reminder that the hostility towards refugees from Asia and Africa is still sometimes virulent.
Sharmill Films
Released 28 November