27.10.2023 19:54 | Monitoring
According to journalists Barbora Koukalová and Petr Konečný, the film Border by Polish director Agnieszka Hollandová, which shows viewers how migrants should have been brutally treated on the Polish-Belarusian border, has a clear message: “Those who guard the borders are beasts, animals.” According to Hollandová, of them in the film, for which millions of crowns were spent from the Czech Republic, also shows the difference between people in cities and rural people, who in her view are “totally desolate”, or criticizes the Poles for helping Ukrainians, while they do not want migrants from the Middle East. The premiere in the Czech Republic should have been unsurprising. “It was clear that it was going to be a ‘Prague coffeehouse’ film, which also came true,” recounted the journalists who went to the event.
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Description: Borders. Agnieszka Holland’s film
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Agnieszka Holland’s film Borders, set in the migration crisis of 2021, when, with the support of the Belarusian regime, attempts were made to bring many illegal migrants from Belarus to the territory of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, arouses considerable passion, and at the premiere of the film in the run-up to the Polish parliamentary elections, she played the soundtrack to the film considerable criticism also from Polish politicians for the way it portrays Polish border guards who defend the borders of Poland and at the same time the Schengen area. In the neighboring country, some called the film “propaganda”, and the Polish Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro even compared it to the “Nazi” one.
The Polish-Czech-French-Belgian film depicting how migrants on the Polish-Belarusian border face threatening treatment was also co-produced by Czech Television and supported by the State Cinematography Fund with four million crowns.
“It’s the money you paid so that a Polish woman could make a film about how we didn’t manage the migration crisis in 2015, and then she went with it to Italy – which is literally experiencing an apocalypse on its islands – and won the Special the jury prize at the Venice festival for a black-and-white film with a completely black-and-white view that the terribly evil Poles do not want to let in migrants from the Middle East and Africa and that they treat them rudely at the border,” Barbora Koukalová commented on the film in the K + K podcast after watching it herself.
Photogallery: – Culture for schools
According to Koukalová, the film is not about how migrants tried to reach Europe, often even by force, and blackmailed border guards, for example by throwing their children over border fences, the film is supposed to be about how “we prevent happiness and do bad things to worthy migrants”.
After watching the film, Petr Konečný acknowledged that, in terms of filmmaking, Agnieszka Holland managed to serve the film’s introduction to the audience skillfully enough to shock them with the inhumanity of the Polish border guards, who, he said, could be compared in the film to holocaust guards. “When you see children tormented by hunger and chased to death by the forest, drowning in swamps… You see men in Polish uniforms throwing a pregnant woman over a fence…” he pointed out, adding that there is also a line in the film that portrays the backward villagers, and on the contrary informed people from the cities who want to save the refugees.
This line is supposed to be quite clear in the film: “Those who guard the borders are beasts, animals, and the locals help them in this. On the contrary, those who come from the cities realize that if Poland does not change, it will become a second Nazi empire,” the journalist summarized.
Photogallery: – Migrants in Belgrade
According to Konečný, the final passage showing a Warsaw lawyer who helps migrants and accepts three Eritreans and normally talks to his wife and children in French at home was quite funny. “She sees the country people as total desolates, basically almost murderers, and in the people in the cities there is hope,” called Holland’s final look.
According to Koukálova, the intention of the film is immediately clear. “The intention of the film is to make you feel guilty for rejecting illegal migrants,” the journalist recounted, adding that her “blood boiled” while watching it, as Holland de facto “pointed the finger at her as an opponent of illegal migration and said : ‘You’re the one to blame'”.
The story of the film also focuses on depicting the fates of Poles who help migrants, and on the contrary, those who want to prevent them from entering Poland. “After moving to the Suwal region, psychologist Julia becomes an involuntary witness and participant in the dramatic events on the Polish-Belarusian border. He decides to give up his comfortable life and joins a group of activists who provide aid to refugees. A Syrian family, accompanied by a teacher from Afghanistan, is fleeing the civil war. However, they are tricked by the Belarusians and forcibly taken to a refugee camp near the border with Poland. There, their fate intersects with the fate of Julia and the young border guard Jan. The events that will encounter them will change their lives forever, not only for them, but also for other migrants and activists.” Czech Television describes the story.
Photogallery: – Paris without refugees
The conclusion of the film, however, also works with the theme of helping Ukrainian refugees, after the majority of the footage depicts the terrible treatment of migrants by Polish border guards. The Polish border guard, who was previously portrayed negatively, in the very end, on the contrary, helps Ukrainian children and gives them toys, which, according to Koukalová and Konečný, is intended to clearly indicate how “we divide people into those who deserve to be in Europe and those who don’t”. “In the epilogue, Holland blames society for the fact that the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland accepted the most Ukrainian refugees – ‘so you accepted Ukrainian refugees, and you still collect toys for them, while the other people who are trying to get to Europe are for you pól’, Koukalová said what she sensed from this story line.
At the premiere of Hranice in the Czech Republic, both journalists noticed a number of well-known personalities, including director Jan Hřebejk, screenwriter Jan Marhoul, actress Jitka Čvančarová, the duo Emy Smetana and Jordan Haje, and producer Eliška Kaplický Fuchsová and the new director of CT Jan Souček, and there was to be a vote of thanks for the support of the film from the Czech public television and the State Cinematography Fund, which supported it with four million. However, the audience was no longer there, and those who paid for it with their taxes were not thanked either.
However, that was not all. “Holland said at the end that she received a thank-you letter for the film and now she expects more thank-you letters… It shows how confident she is in her ‘do-gooder’ attitude. She expects a thank you letter for making a film about how we are all terribly evil and how we don’t want to allow other people to live the European dream,” added Koukalová, as the premiere looked like.
Photogallery: – Counter-demonstration for accepting refugees
Unlike Koukalová and Konečný, the director of the State Cinematography Fund, Helena Bezděk Fraňková, was impressed by the film. “I am proud that the State Film Fund contributed to the creation of such a film. The film Hranice is exactly the film that deals with current social and political topics and develops a critical dialogue and discussion about these topics. Highlighting society’s problems and asking uncomfortable questions is one of the tasks of cinema.” praised the director of the institutionwhich knocked the film into the millions.
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The article contains labels
CT , culture , migration , Ministry of Culture , Poland , artists , Belarus , refugees , Konečný , refugees , migrants , Hollandová , State Cinematography Fund , war in Ukraine , Kokalová , K+K
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author: Radek Kotas
2023-10-27 17:10:00
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