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GREEN BORDER (2023)

(2023)

Official Selection out of Competition | Poland, France, Czech Republic, Belgium | Polish, Arabic, English, French | 152 min

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About the Film

The latest film from Polish auteur Agnieszka Holland shines an uncomfortable spotlight on an ongoing humanitarian crisis as she charts the awful brutalities faced by refugees attempting to cross from Belarus into Poland. Set in October, 2021, after Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko invited refugees to his country disturbingly promising them they could cross the border into Poland and apply for asylum more easily under false pretences, Green Border (Zielona Granica) offers five harrowing chapters that delve into various aspects of the grim situation.

Bashir (Jalal Altawil), his wife (Dalia), father (Mohamad Al Rashi) and their three children arrive in Belarus after spending years in a refugee camp after fleeing Syria and on their way to the border they travel with Leila (Behi Djanati Atai), a kind Afghan woman they met on the flight. But what they hoped would be a safe route to a safer country soon turns into horror as they are pushed back-and-forth across the border zone by both countries as the Polish Border Patrol has been authorised keep these refugees out of the country at all costs and Belarus just wanting them out of its zone.

Perspective is also offered by Polish activists, who are assisted by Julia (Maja Ostaszewska), a psychiatrist shocked by the violence the migrants are enduring, and a Polish border agent (Tomasz Wlosok), whose wife is due to give birth, and whose house is building near the exclusion zone is often used by desperate refugees.

Agnieszka Holland makes sure that Green Border is never an easy watch, and that fact that this brutality is on-going – and despite Poland welcoming refugees from Ukraine it shows less enthusiasm for those from Syria and Africa – with the film tough on both well-intentioned liberals as it is on violent Government policies. The film may be heavy handed in its message at times, but it is an important message to get across.

Mark Adams

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Director

Agnieszka Holland

Agnieszka Holland studied filmmaking in Prague during the late 1960s and after co-directing her first feature, Screen Tests (1977), she began a fruitful relationship with Polish director Andrzej Wajda, writing the screenplay for Without Anesthesia (1979). She gained notoriety as part of the Polish New Wave but after martial law was declared in Poland, she moved to Paris. For Angry Harvest Holland received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film Category in 1986 and for Europa, Europa in 1992 she won the Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay. She tackled a mainstream project for executive producer Francis Ford Coppola, directing a remake of The Secret Garden (1993). Other films include Washington Square (1997), In Darkness (2011), Burning Bush (2013) and Spoor (2017).

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