Green Border 

Directed by Agnieska Holland (2023)

Review by Maria Jastrzębska

The region where the green border of this film’s title lies, between Poland and Belarus, is an area of primeval forest stretching to wetland and farmland. It is home to bison, wolves, elk, sometimes bears, cranes, a myriad of birds, insects, and plants, attracting nature scholars from all over the world. However, in recent years it has become a militarised zone. Thousands of people from countries including Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Cameroon attempting to seek asylum in the EU have ended up trapped in the inhospitable no man’s territory between the two countries. Green Border tells a fictionalised account of their story. 

For people hunted by soldiers as if they were animals, without food, water or protective clothing, this is a treacherous, hellish place. Having fled terror in their own countries, paying over the odds to cross the border into Poland, they think they have finally reached safety only to suffer pushbacks between Poland and Belarus from the guards. In its depiction of this brutality, Agnieszka Holland’s film is one of the most powerful I have seen. She was subjected to hate speech for making it, especially by members and supporters of the recent Polish government, under which the worst atrocities were committed. 

Shot in black and white, the film is suggestive of older war films yet is frighteningly current. During night scenes, audiences, like the characters in the film, struggle to see or understand what will happen. In a chilling scene, the commander schools young guards not to be ‘hoodwinked’ into compassion for the refugees who, in his words, are only pretending to have families and are ‘not human beings’ but ‘Lukashenko’s bullets’. That the Belarus authorities were cynically using refugees as part of the ‘hybrid war’, luring them in numbers to the Polish border with false promises in order to destabilise the EU, is widely accepted. The racist, sexist directives of the commander are another thing altogether. 

We follow a family of Syrians, including the grandfather (Mohamad Al Rashi) and several young children, joined by Leila, (Behi Djanati Ata) an Afghan teacher, all growing steadily worn down and more afraid after violent ill treatment as they are sent back and forth across the border joining groups of other exhausted, terrified refugees. English or French are their common languages across cultures. But the true lingua franca is human kindness, the sharing of scant provisions or clothes, a simple gesture from one person to another. This is where Agnieszka Holland excels. In telling this horrific story, her focus is always on individuals. It is their stories which keep us watching. 

While Holland does not hesitate to show people at their very worst, she also shows them at their best, most generous, despite their vulnerability – or perhaps because of it. You can’t help wondering what you would do in their shoes. 

We meet Polish activists trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the refugees in the most testing of situations. Searching dense forest in response to faint cries for help, carrying medicine, food, and power banks for phones, they are harassed and hounded at every turn by police and the military. Their astounding courage and determination matches only that of the refugees themselves. But Holland does not portray the activists as saints. They’re stressed, tired, frustrated, sometimes squabbling, with different opinions as to how best to help. Some follow strict NGO procedures, offering refugees help to seek asylum, though unable to make promises. Others are more maverick in their approach to this impossible situation. One is psychotherapist Julia (Maja Ostaszewska) who rejects official channels, entering areas forbidden to relief workers to rescue anyone found injured or alone overnight.  

Holland also homes in on Jan (Tomasz Włosok), a young border guard with a pregnant wife, who is torn between acting the tough drinking man and obeying orders or responding humanely to the refugees’ plight. It is precisely his loving connection to his wife and the family they’re starting which brings a glimmer of redemption. But Holland creates her most hopeful moment when three rescued African boys meet a Polish girl and boys. Here, music is the common language. United by a shared love of hip hop and rap, together they sing Mourir Mille Fois by Congolese French rapper Youssepha: Je plie quand tu plies, je pleure quand tu pleures (I fold when you fold, I cry when you cry).

The epilogue, by contrast to the rest of the film, shows refugees being welcomed in great numbers at the Polish border with Ukraine in 2022 after the Russian government’s invasion – an example of how well a society can and did respond. Though we know now that people of colour at the same border often met with a different fate.