Green Border 2023

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