“During the Third Reich, the Germans produced propaganda films to portray Poles as bandits and murderers. Now they have Agnieszka Holland for it,” announced current Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro on the social media platform “X” (formerly Twitter) a few weeks before the big premiere of “Green Border” at the Venice International Film Festival. His completely inappropriate Nazi comparison is aimed at the Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, who, like no other contemporary filmmaker, has relentlessly exposed the political conditions in her home country in her earlier films. She does the same with “Green Border“, her latest feature film, which deals with a dark chapter of the recent refugee crisis and portrays the unbelievable conditions on the “green border” between Poland and Belarus from several perspectives.
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“Green Border” addresses political failure at all levels
If the Polish Minister of Justice feels compelled to tweet like this in light of a film release, comparing the output of a renowned filmmaker with the Nazi propaganda machine, then there is certainly reason to suspect that Holland may have stung a hornet’s nest with her latest work. “Green Border” begins with a simple act: in a tracking shot over the border forest in question, Holland removes the color from her film and lets the subsequent scenes, perspectives, characters and places appear in black and white. The stylistic device seems all the more consistent because in the following 140 minutes, scenes of horror, cruelty, despair and horror and at least some of quiet hope and tenderness are revealed to the audience.
The feature film is set in autumn 2021, when a new wave of refugees died, some of them in a gruesome way, in the same forested area between Belarus, Poland and Lithuania. The Belarusian ruler Lukashenko had lured people from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Congo to Belarus with the promise of ensuring that they would make it as easy as possible for them to leave the EU. It was purely a propaganda tool used by the autocrat and directed against the EU. At the Polish border, the border officials reacted with brutal intimidation methods, illegal pushbacks, violence and terror in order to stop the flow of refugees in the bud.
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Holland’s film asks uncomfortable questions in powerful images
“Green Border” tells an uncomfortable truth with powerful images! Photo: Venice Film Festival
Holland initially focuses on a Syrian family that wants to cross the Belarusian-Polish border to join relatives in Sweden. Abandoned in the forest and driven like cattle along the barbed wire fence to Poland, they are left to their own devices and experience a series of cruelties that can hardly be described in words and visually develop a nightmarish quality. However, for Holland it is not just about showing the horror at the EU’s external border, but also about giving a face to the protagonists on all sides: the border officials who are brutally drilled in briefings by their superiors that Lukashenko and Putin don’t have them Not sending people across the border, but “live bullets”. The activists and helpers who are often close to despair because they are bound by legal conventions and have to navigate a very thin line. And the bystanders around the “Green Border” who ultimately inevitably become involved in the situation – whether they want to or not.
The fact that Holland chooses to make a feature film from different narrative perspectives also makes her very vulnerable to this highly explosive topic. Actors who may not play convincingly. Storylines that seem much paler than others. And any small misstep in terms of dramaturgy, staging, processing and authenticity could quickly derail this disturbing film. But that never happens to “Green Border”, which is mainly thanks to Holland’s outstanding direction and its very strong ensemble cast. The story of the psychotherapist Julia (brilliantly played by Maja Ostaszewska) in particular gets under your skin: she decides to join the group of helpers at the “Green Border” and is confronted with truths that she would previously have preferred to close her eyes to.
This will also be the case for many viewers who may have heard “this story” in the news etc. many times, but are not prepared for the concentrated cinematic power of “Green Border”. Over 30 years after her exceptional film “Europe, EuropeAgnieszka Holland once again delivers essential political cinema that tears not only the heart of her home country, but also of the European Union, into a thousand pieces. In the film’s final epilogue, which we don’t want to reveal at this point, Holland presents the provocative antithesis to the madness on the Belarusian-Polish border. And probably her most important question: “Isn’t every human life worth the same?”
And ultimately, the Polish Minister of Justice’s tweet provides final proof of this: there is still good reason to be afraid of strong political cinema. That’s the highest seal of approval you can give Agnieszka Holland for her explosive “Green Broder.”
“Green Border” officially premiered in competition at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. The film has been in German cinemas since February 1st, 2024!
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2024-02-04 16:30:23
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