“Green Border”: a shocking look at the refugee crisis in Poland

But as the experience of a Syrian family fleeing ISIS shows, the crossing is dangerous and brutal, and the promise of a new life free from oppression is elusive.

This, and a final punch in the gut from the border shift between Ukraine and Poland, is the message that the 75-year-old Polish filmmaker conveys with her carefully crafted and painfully captivating black-and-white film.

It begins with the Syrian family – father Bashir (Jalal Altawil), his children and their grandfather (Al Rashi Mohamad) – on a plane to Belarus, where they are picked up by a man who takes them to Poland and finally to Sweden, where Bashir’s brother lives.

But as they are jostled back and forth in the bus to the border, the family, who are joined by Afghan refugee Leila (Behi Djanati Atai), discover that the seemingly easy journey is literally a nightmare. Blackmailed by Belarusian border guards, they are abandoned in a forest and then forced across the border. When they meet Polish border guards there, they are literally thrown back to Belarus.

One of these border guards, Jan (Tomasz Wlosok), is the focus of the second of the film’s three parts. We see him dealing with the racist commander who wants the refugees out or killed, while taking care of his pregnant wife and their house under construction, which serves as a shelter for the refugees at night.

The third part focuses on Polish activists who try to help the refugees and avoid prison themselves, as well as the therapist Julia (Maja Ostaszewska), who, after meeting the activists, finds herself in increasing danger as she defies the activist rules and tries to save some of the refugees, including the family who have been enduring torment and loss for weeks.

Holland wrote the film’s script with Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Lazarkiewicz-Sieczko, but it feels like it could be a documentary capturing the horrors at the border in October 2021.

This is partly due to the gritty, haunting camerawork of Tomasz Naumiuk, who captures the violence and chaos at the border with haunting realism. It is also due to the naturalistic portrayals of everyone involved, and especially the family, where young Taim Ajjan, to name just one, is extremely believable as the son Nur, who befriends Leila as they try to escape the guards.

Green Border has been called “misery porn” and, to be honest, some of the depictions of the relentless brutality faced by the refugees and, to a lesser extent, the activists are hard to stomach.

But Holland’s film, which ends in 2022, is too good to shy away from: It is a powerful portrayal of the refugee crisis, reminiscent of the US-Mexico border, as it points to the racism at the heart of border security and, without mincing words, argues for a compassionate approach to refugees.