Green Border

By producing and releasing Green Border, a fictional depiction of Poland's refugee crisis and the inhumanity it engenders, legendary director Agnieszka Holland has used her clout to burn bridges with her home nation's film body. At cinemas in Poland that receive state money, Green Border must play prefaced by a government video offering an 'alternative' view of the refugee crisis. This alone may be enough indication that film in general, and this film in particular, is a powerful tool.

The view of the situation shown in Green Border is harrowing. Holland divides the film, co-written with Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko, into chapters. The first centres on a group of refugees who fly into Belarus to cross into neighbouring Poland – the closest EU country – through a razor wire-delineated forest crossing. If caught, they are shunted back and forth across the border by Belarussian and Polish guards who don't want the responsibility of dead bodies on their side. A subsequent chapter introduces Polish humanitarian activists who work to get asylum seekers legal representation and due process. Another follows a border guard, who tries to keep his battalion life and activities separate from his home life with his pregnant partner. The film also dives into the life of a therapist who lives close to the military-controlled Exclusion Zone and witnesses refugee and border guard action firsthand, becoming radicalised in the process.

These varied viewpoints show a system utterly broken, where small kindnesses may prove futile in the face of state-sponsored violence but are never worthless by themselves. Holland and editor Pavel Hrdlička masterfully weave through these perspectives and lives, allowing each performance to bring full, rounded humanity to their characters without any of them devolving into archetypes.

Green Border is not devoid of lighthearted and even humorous moments, be it in youthful activist daring or teenage bonding across cultures. But what lingers most in the film is a sense that these vibrant lives are diverted and destroyed through no fault of their own, and full fault of those complicit with the exclusionary policies of Europe's national leaders.

The least charitable reading of Green Border would be to say it is didactic, repetitive, unsubtle, but that seems to be the point. When thousands of people die every year trying to claim asylum – a human right enshrined since 1951, to little evident good – and when Western countries’ inhumane treatment of such migrants creates further social and moral problems, a subtle approach feels deflective rather than interrogatory. Until asylum-seeking is enshrined as a real as well as theoretical right, Green Border remains relevant.

The film’s opening shot is soaked in a deep green, swooping low over a forest before fading to the bleak yet crisp black and white that the rest of the film is shot in by cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk. After the final chapter closes, an epilogue – set mere months after the film’s events – throws new, maddening light on the situation. Holland saves her strongest rage-inducing blow for last, and the effect is a call to action and reaffirmation of human dignity.

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Released 21 Jun by Modern Films; certificate 15