This Refugee Film Was Blasted By a Right-Wing Government – Then it Helped Overthrow Them
If you’ve ever wanted to understand the real plight of a refugee, there’s no better film than Green Border.
good.film
4 months ago
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Green Border opens in select Australian cinemas on November 28.
WATCH THE TRAILER AND FIND SESSION TIMES
It’s not too often we find ourselves stuck for words. But for once, a new release has left us speechless. Winner of seven separate prizes at the Venice Film Festival, Green Border is an urgent, extraordinary film that spears your heart like an arrow. It’s arresting. It’s shocking, at times. And it takes a vast and messy situation (like the refugee crisis) and somehow, unpacks a core truth from beneath a thousand complex layers.
Over her 50-year career, Polish master filmmaker Agnieszka Holland has made a habit of distilling stories like these. Hey, it takes a master to put a face on a global crisis. Spurred by a sense of anger at the world around her – in her words, making statement films like these is “her duty” – she’s taken a geopolitical hot potato and laid it bare on screen in the realest human terms.
For audiences who see “refugee” as just a headline in a newspaper, Green Border changes everything.
What’s the real-life background to Green Border?
This is VERY nutshelly, but the basic catalyst lies in Belarus, and its authoritarian leader for the last three decades, Aleksandr Lukashenko. After his latest election “victory” (translation: he stole it), the EU slapped sanctions on Belarus and his regime. In response, Lukashenko devised a strategy worthy of a Bond villain. He essentially manufactured a humanitarian crisis, by encouraging migrants from Middle Eastern countries to enter Belarus with the promise of easy travel to neighbouring countries like Poland. For people ducking bombs, it felt like salvation.
But the “easy promises” were a sham; propaganda designed purely to stoke geopolitical tensions. More than just a cynical move, it’s been described as “hybrid warfare”: using vulnerable people (like Syrians fleeing war) as human leverage. As the leader of the Polish Border Guard reminds his employees in the film, in an effort to tamp down their compassion: “They aren't people – they are weapons of Lukashenko.”
It meant that refugees became unwitting pawns in a political chess game – stuck between Belarus and Poland with nowhere to go. Because Polish guards patrolled their OWN side of the border, these people became trapped in the freezing, swampy forest between the two countries. In the last decade, estimates suggest over 30,000 people have drowned or starved to death trying to cross Europe’s “Green Borders”.
Why has Green Border been controversial?
There’s no doubting Green Border’s merit – it’s outstanding. Along with dozens of international prizes, the film was awarded Best Picture by the Polish Film Festival, the Polish Film Academy, and the Polish Film Critics group. But thanks to the film’s um, less-than-patriotic view of Poland’s steely border policy, not every Polish institution was enthralled.
The film was “aggressively vilified” by the Polish government, and many conservative ministers heavily criticised the film, claiming it was “disgusting”, “morally shameful” and even comparing it to Nazi propaganda. The Minister for Higher Education called for Holland’s citizenship to be revoked, saying Green Border was “slandering Polish services, the Polish military, [and] spitting on the Polish state”.
The film was also targeted by right-wingers in a review-bombing campaign on Poland’s most popular movie website, dragging Green Border’s rating down to an absurd 2.3 out of 10; the site’s editor called the attack “unprecedented” and “extreme” (by the way, this is called “brigading” - and you can read more about it here).
Fascinatingly, a month after Green Border was released in Poland (setting a record opening weekend in ticket sales), the country’s right-wing government was roundly defeated in their general election. It’s the first time in a decade they’d come up short at the polls – and while of course there’s other factors at play, it’s also a genuine case of entertainment making a measurable contribution to impactful change. Speaking to The Guardian, Agnieszka Holland described the moment as an “awakening… in that moment, we started to feel empowered.”
How does Green Border humanise the refugee crisis?
Holland clearly recognises that, to put it bluntly, the refugee crisis is a mess that’s too easily written off as “somebody else’s problem.” To break through that, Green Border zooms into just a handful of characters: a psychologist who becomes an activist, a Polish border guard who starts questioning the morality of his job, and a Syrian family who are desperate to reach safety.
Seeing their lives intertwine means we see the conflict first-hand from three vastly different perspectives. Take the Syrian family: the parents, Bashir and Amina (played by Jalal Altawil and Dalia Naous), are shepherding their three young children on a Turkish Airlines flight. They lost their home, their store, and most of their possessions in Syria thanks to war, but now they’re full of hope – “This route through Belarus is a gift from God”, says Bashir.
Of course, we know that things won’t be that smooth or simple. From the moment they’re collected in Belarus, the dream they were promised starts to fracture: they’re ripped off by their driver; then, distant gunshots ring out. Before they know it, Bashir and his family are being forced to crawl under razor wire (clutching a baby!) as their bags are thrown over the fence. “This is the border. Now run.” They’re in Poland – but where?
What Green Border manages so effectively is putting us right in their shoes. We’re torn from the comfort of a plane, and hope of a new future, to the panic and fear of being stranded in an empty forest with a fading phone battery and almost no supplies. Holland then ramps up the stark reality of their situation: initial indignities like soiled clothes and blisters give way to urgent dilemmas like Amina running out of breastmilk for her youngest child. It feels like we’re on this journey with them, and their anguish feels utterly real.
With later scenes, Holland introduces other concepts that will make you burn with injustice. There’s a recurring theme of betrayal: like the farmer they stumble upon who gives them apples, but then reports their location; or the Polish border guards who seem kind to them at first – giving them cigarettes, and entertaining the baby – before loading them onto a truck they claim is heading to Germany. We already know it’s a deception. They shove them back under the Belarusian fence at gunpoint, where they’re beaten, bitten by dogs and given the water they’re desperate for – containing crushed glass.
You want to scream WHY?! (one character does, in fact, yelling simply, “We need your HELP!”) But the cruelty is the point. These guards aren’t blind to these peoples’ desperation, they’re just working to stamp out their hope. And perversely, the more inhumanely they treat these refugees, the easier it becomes to see them as animals. Perhaps it’s the ONLY way the guards can get through what's demanded of them (a moral quandary that we get into below).
Finding a “camp” of other stranded refugees, Bashir meets a man who says he’s crossed into Poland 5 or 6 times – “but every time they catch me and send me back here.” In one crazed, very intense moment, the guards literally throw a pregnant woman over the razor wire, like a bag of garbage. At this point it’s obvious why there was such conservative blowback against Green Border. Holland makes it crystal clear that to the Polish government, these aren’t people with names and children; they aren’t families with stories and hopes. They’re human hand grenades, endlessly being tossed back to become “somebody else’s problem” again.
“Films are there for people to develop empathy for worlds unknown or scary to them. Films are there to defuse irrational fears and to nurture a certain kind of feeling – one that transcends individual experience.”
~ Filmmaker Agnieszka Holland
What does Green Border have to say about the Polish perspective?
Holland puts a face on this side via Jan (Tomasz Włosok), a young husband with a pregnant wife, a half-built home, and a Polish border guard uniform. It’s obvious he’s not the kind of man who’s crushing glass into drinking water – but perhaps, neither was the cruel guard when HE first started the job. It just starts here. When his team leader gives a stern lecture to the group of guards, telling them to stay resolute because refugees “want to play on our Polish compassion”, he might as well be talking to Jan directly.
For the Polish government, it’s “optics”. They can’t allow an unchecked stream of refugees through their borders, so the policy is hard-line: send them back. That’s easy to say from afar, but Jan – and hundreds of guards like him – are the ones actually AT the border. And it’s here where things are far less black & white (which reminds us, is Holland’s choice of film stock for Green Border a nod to the many shades of grey in a humanitarian crisis? The contrasty look absolutely gives the film an urgent realism – like we’re living within a documentary).
The more we see Jan at work, the more uncomfortable he seems marrying his job description with his own conscience. He starts drinking more – is it just to “let off steam”, or is he trying to blot out the threats of violence he’s used that day? After one harrowing scene where he’s forced to toss a dead body over the border (he’s been instructed to “make them disappear”), Jan breaks down screaming in his car. If you’re feeling stressed at work, imagine this being your 9 to 5.
Holland also uses Jan’s wife to illustrate the walls closing in on his sense of morality. At the grocery store, she pushes back on the dissent among their neighbourhood, defending her husband’s job by saying “If we let them in, thousands more will follow.” But later, in the privacy of their bedroom, she questions Jan’s role while she watches the latest social media video of Syrian refugees at their border. “You don't have to do this”, she tells her exhausted husband.
Green Border brings these “opposite” sides full circle in a tense climactic scene when, after beating impossible odds, Bashir locks eyes directly with Jan. Political forces have painted them as “enemies”, and we’re on tenterhooks as we watch Jan face a moment of personal reckoning in real time. Like the refugees, he realises he’s become a government pawn, too.
Now, Jan gets a choice. Too small to change the course of history, perhaps, but definitely a choice that will utterly transform another man’s life, and the lives of his loved ones. There’s a symbolic coda as Jan strips off his uniform before bed that night. He’s seen enough suffering at the Green Border, and he no longer believes in his actions.
“Every day when we finished shooting, we knew we’d be returning to a warm hotel, where a meal was waiting for us. I kept thinking about all those people who have no idea when they’ll finally be somewhere safe again. Who don’t know if they’ll die the next minute, whether their children will die.”
~ Mohamad Al Rashi, Actor
How does Green Border show the people caught in the middle?
This is where Holland’s “intertwining” technique really comes to the fore. The refugees caught between the Green Border aren’t completely alone – there’s a small but determined group of activists, regular citizens, who help deliver whatever aid they can. Some are small comforts: chocolate, dry shoes, hot soup. Other supplies, like medicines, are literally life saving.
One major character doesn’t think of herself as an activist at all. Julia (Maja Ostaszewska) is a psychologist whose only real crossover with the border crisis is listening to her angry client rail against the rightwing government. Until the day she hears cries near her home; the next thing she knows, she’s saving a distraught Afghan woman from drowning in a swamp. For Julia, it’s a total awakening. She can’t believe that people are left to die so close to civilisation.
But the greater shock comes after Julia helps the Afghan woman safely to hospital. Despite her dehydration and hypothermia, border guards tear the woman from her bed and deport her. Watching from the car park, Julia is literally powerless to stop them. It’s shocking to watch, but its inclusion is very deliberate – Julia’s at the centre of this, because she’s OUR eyes. We mightn’t relate directly to the life of a refugee or a border guard, but MOST of us have been in a situation where someone needs our help.
As Julia explains to a reluctant friend (whose car she hopes to borrow, to help more refugees), “Helping is not illegal.” But this isn’t Hollywood, folks. Not once in Green Border does helping look easy. It comes with sacrifices that not everyone is willing to make. “What if they [the police] catch you and tie it to me?” Julia’s friend responds. She seems annoyed that she was nearly dragged into any action at all, no matter how passive: “I’m sorry, but I can't. And don't ask me for such things again.”
It only strengthens Julia’s resolve, but it’s maddening to see people with privilege sit on their hands – especially when the victims are innocent. In one scene, Julia huddles with a young Black refugee as night falls in the frigid border forest. We’re suddenly struck by the normalcy of his life as he shows Julia photos of his little brother on his phone. Playing the guitar, kicking goals… universal stuff that could be on anyone’s Insta grid.
While it’s inspiring to watch Julia gradually change from a naive “helper” to someone who literally turns her home into a rescue centre, there’s no sugar coating how difficult (and risky) it is. At one point Julia’s car is vandalised; later, she’s stripped, searched and held in a cell overnight. She breaks her group’s own guidelines to prevent this African boy from freezing to death. Green Border asks us, why? Why does Julia, and so many others like her, risk their own safety and turn their own lives upside down?
Perhaps it’s because, like the border guards whose cruelty snowballs over time, the opposite is also true. Once we’ve seen humanity struggle first hand, and seen the difference that small acts can make, we can’t stop. By an overwhelming majority, these aren’t criminals; seeking safety for your children isn’t a crime. As one refugee says in a direct-to-video plea: “My only sin is to have the world's worst passport. We just want a normal life. We just want to live.”
“Cinema is not completely powerless – it can show the truth about the world and fate from different points of view. It can illuminate difficult human choices and pull them out of the shadows. It can pose questions that we don’t know the answers to – but by asking them, we can make a little more sense of the world.”
~ Filmmaker Agnieszka Holland
What are critics saying about Green Border?
“Holland’s film, though at times tough to watch, is so beautifully made, and so attuned to all the things we respond to as humans, that it’s ultimately more joyful than dispiriting.”
- Stephanie Zacharek, TIME
“A formidable, furious masterpiece… Green Border is vital, angry and propulsive. This is film-making that comes out fighting. And it could not be more timely.”
- Wendy Ide, The Guardian
“Green Border is compassionate, brutal, accusatory — and essential viewing.”
- David Fear, Rolling Stone
So what’s the takeaway from Green Border?
There’s so much more to Green Border that’s nearly impossible to convey here. Agnieszka Holland manages to make a statement with almost every frame, from the breathtaking opening aerial shot of beautiful, lush green forests – the one and only moment we see colour in the film – to the ending statement reminding us that today, people are still dying at the Polish-Belarusian border.
The handheld camerawork lends Green Border a realism, while the black & white imagery lends it a foreboding – the sense that this is living history; a shameful chapter of Europe’s recent past that somehow, we’re still allowing to take place today. Actually, there’s plenty of hints of WWII-era social action that bubble to mind while watching the film, like how there’s always the “helpers” in oppressive scenarios – the ones that band together to skirt around a regime, and throw open their doors as shelter.
When they do, the characters’ shared humanity shines through, and Green Border pulls off the magic to which cinema lends itself so beautifully: it’s somehow impossible NOT to imagine yourself in these refugee’s places. We may not share a language or a border or even a nationality with these characters, but those are all constructs. We invented them. As trite as it sounds, the one core truth we all share is that we're all human. While our news cycles work hard to distract us from that, Green Border paints that reminder in bold black ink.
Green Border opens in select Australian cinemas on November 28.
WATCH THE TRAILER AND FIND SESSION TIMES
