“Green Border” Film: Refugees’ Harrowing Journey from Belarus to Poland Captured in Agnieszka Holland’s Gripping Drama

As we approach Minsk, roses are handed to the passengers, including the Syrian family with grandfather and baby: Welcome to Belarus! Mother Amina (Dalia Naous) tells her neighbor, the Afghan English teacher Leila (Behi Djanati Atai), that she is glad she doesn’t have to find her way to Europe via the Mediterranean. She would not have expected her three children to take this dangerous route.

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So far it all looks like a well-organized tourist trip. The Belarusian forests glow green when you look out the airplane window. The trees will soon become miraculously discolored: This almost two and a half hour film will remain black and white from now on until the last image.

Minutes later in Agnieszka Holland’s refugee drama “Green Border,” the family finds itself in swampy forests. Barbed wire rolls between the pines. On one side is Belarus, on the other Poland. The smugglers from the airport disappeared with their minibus, not without pocketing a few hundred euros extra.

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In the next few days and weeks, Belarusian and Polish uniformed men will appear. Their actions are no different from each other. Or are the Belarusian ones even more brutal? They use rubber clubs to beat the refugees on the other side of the barbed wire. This is called “pushback” in bureaucratic terms, and not just in Poland. At night, corpses are heaved over the barbed wire to the other side. Let the others take care of it.

Dictator Alexander Lukashenko uses them as a human weapon, a Polish refugee helper explains to the people living in the forest. The helper ventured into the exclusion zone with soup, sleeping bag and charger. The family around father Bashir (Jalal Altawil) has become a pawn in European migration policy aimed at deterrence. The Polish police are trained to drive the refugees back as potential rapists and robbers.

Director in the wheels of politics

The Polish director Holland forces us to take a closer look at what we usually learn about in abstract reports on the “Tagesschau” or in emotionless talk shows. There are hardly any images of the ruthless events on the German-Belarusian border in 2021/2022: journalists and helpers were denied access at the time.

In Poland, director Holland got caught up in the wheels of politics. Before the parliamentary election, she was insulted by the right as a “traitor” and her film was denigrated as “Nazi propaganda”. Holland only dared to go out in public with bodyguards. She was the polluter who only wanted one thing: to draw attention to the misery at Europe’s borders.

Holland has always tackled difficult topics. Her most famous film in Germany: “Hitlerjunge Salomon” (1990) is about a Jew who survived National Socialism in Germany as a member of the Hitler Youth. A true story.

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Vending machines in government service?

In fact, “Green Border” is thoroughly partisan. But Holland also differentiates. At first, the Polish police officers invariably appear like callous automatons in civil service. But we soon get to know the young civil servant Janek (Tomasz Włosok), who cannot reconcile his actions with his conscience. At one point Janek sits in his car and screams. Later he will wave a small truck through, even though he has spotted the Syrian family in the back.

Everyone has to behave in a certain way here. The Polish psychologist Julia (Maja Ostaszewska) discovers a drowning boy in the moor and becomes an activist who soon has to endure humiliation from the authorities herself. Her neighbor, on the other hand, does not want to make her car available for relief efforts. She wants what we all want: her peace.

Little by little, reasons for escape become apparent. One has scars on his back from whippings administered by IS, the other had contact with Polish soldiers in Afghanistan and has been at risk since the Taliban came to power. But who cares about that in Polish forests?

At one point, the clueless psychologist Julia asks what the European Union is doing to help people. An activist curls up with bitter laughter. The EU? It doesn’t matter to them if tens of thousands drown in the Mediterranean. That is exactly what the deterrence consists of.

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Special price in Venice

We would like to show this film to all those who use their statements every day to fuel the race for shabbiness at the EU borders. “Green Border” was honored with a special prize at the Venice Film Festival.

In the end, Holland shows refugees who are warmly welcomed by the Polish police at the border. They are Ukrainians. Humanity is possible when it is compatible with one’s own political interests.

Today, a five-meter-high fence stretches 187 kilometers along the Belarusian-Polish border, secured with barbed wire, cameras and drones.

“Green Border”, Regie: Agnieszka Holland, myth Maja Ostaszewska, Dalia Naous, Jalal Altawil, Tomasz Włosok, 147 Minuten, FSK o. A.

2024-01-26 23:49:32
#clubs #refugees