‘Green Border’ Review: Agnieszka Holland’s Devastating and Incisive Portrait of the Belarus-Poland Refugee Crisis | Venice

“They have been watching us for 10 years. No one did anything,” bitterly remarks Syrian refugee Bashir (Jalal Altawil) when asked by activists to show scars from his mistreatment under the totalitarian regime. Bashir and his family are one of several refugee characters that Agnieszka Holland focuses on in Green Border, taking an incisive approach not just to inform viewers of the plight of refugees, but also ask uncomfortable, necessary questions over collective inaction to them when they seek help. 

The titular Belarus-Poland border has been the centre of an ongoing migrant crisis with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko luring refugees from the Middle East and Africa into crossing the border, using them as political weapons against the EU. Holland presents us with a vividly human portrait of these political pawns whose hopes of a better future are so quickly, harshly torn away. Green Border is structured into chapters, starting with an opening that introduces us to Bashir and his family, and an Afghan refugee Leila (Behi Djanati Ataï) who joins them on their journey to reach the European Union through Belarus. “This route through Belarus is a gift from god,” muses one of the refugees. Holland and cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk show how brutally their initial euphoria gets undercut by the shadowy, treacherous swamps and forests they traverse, instilling horror that worsens when they encounter Polish guards at the borders. 

Holland never shies away from the mistreatment of the refugees by these guards. As the film’s scope gradually expands to other Middle Eastern and African refugees, we see them all share in the collective experience of despicable mistreatment by the guards. The swiftness with which situations escalate are captured in horrifying detail, where not even the elderly or pregnant women are spared from the guards’ cruelty. “We would invite you to our homes,” the refugees despondently cry out, lost on individuals drunk on power, delivering beatings with the glib assurance of no consequences for treating these individuals as the tools their government has designated them as. 

Holland’s daring choice to also show the perspective of the guards is notable here, with an unnerving sequence where she shows the border recruits being indoctrinated by a government official. Shades of Holland’s Europa Europa are evident here as we see these guards get instructed into seeing these refugees as ‘weapons of Putin and Lukashenko’ and treating them as such. ‘There are to be no dead bodies,’ the government official emphasises, where keeping them alive is not a matter of morality or law, but rather to avoid bureaucratic inconveniences. We spend some time with one of the new recruits, Jan (Tomasz Włosok), and showing the ways in which his job takes a toll on his personal life. When his wife, watching a video of border guards beating up refugees, pinpoints the exact point in the video she can see him, Holland shows the glimmer of humanity in Jan’s guilt but also the way in which he has self-servingly compartmentalised this as part of his duty to his government. 

The film also shows scenes of activists who endeavour to provide the refugees with assistance, as well as new member Julia’s (Maja Ostaszewska) assimilation into the group. The scenes that focus on Julia may initially feel a tad extraneous, and a few of her day-to-day life encounters could’ve possibly have been trimmed down, but the purpose of them become all the more evident as the film progresses. The scene where two storylines converge and Julia gets firmly pulled away from inaction to activism is one of the most haunting gut-punches one will see this year. 

As Holland shows the activists trying, and at times failing, to provide help to the refugees, she acknowledges the frustrations of many such endeavours, while also never forgetting to tie all this back to the increasingly futile plight of the refugees. Two of the most haunting lines in the film – “I don’t even know if I’m human anymore” and ‘” don’t know why I’m alive” – are from the refugees speaking on camera for the activists, slowly processing their dehumanisation so painfully. There are moments of respite and joy towards the end in a fashion that feels well-earned, tempered by Holland reminding us of all the suffering and sacrifices it took to get there. Green Border is an uncomfortable, powerful and necessary film for our times, forcing us to look within ourselves and question the natural human inclination to inaction in the face of others’ suffering. 

Grade: A

This review is from the 2023 Venice Film Festival. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.