It is Belarus, that perpetual hotbed of human rights abuses, and in particular dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who is fanning the flames of Europe’s refugee crisis, now nearly 10 years old. In 2021, Lukashenko promised to destabilise the European Union by flooding it with migrants. Lured by the promise of easy access to the EU, refugees fleeing their hostile, war-torn countries are flown to Minsk and then herded to the Polish border. Once there, Belarusian troops helpfully lift the barbed wire to make room to crawl through: please don’t mind the shots, but be afraid to rip your coat on that spike there, and maybe run as fast as you can before the Polish border patrol arrives. Well done, you’ve crossed a green border, named for the vegetation but also for the general insecurity.
Agnieszka Holland Green border begins with such a flight, sleepy passengers and restless children, quiet murmurs. Bashir (Altawil) and Amina (Naous) are fleeing Syria with their two young children and toddler, as well as Bashir’s father. The family’s destination is Sweden, where Bashir’s brother lives. Transport has been confirmed and paid for, cellphone pings have been sent and locations saved. The omens begin with the bus driver demanding extra money at the border, and pretty quickly the ground falls away beneath them. Scurrying into the forests of eastern Poland, they are soon confronted by border guards and swiftly dragged back through the barbed wire into Belarus, where they are recaptured and thrown back across the border into Poland, caught in a hellish game of ping-pong.
The film also follows one of the Polish border guards, Jan (Włosok), a young man with a pregnant wife, Kasia (Buss), and perhaps a slightly better conscience than his colleagues. While Jan drinks to forget the horrific duties of his job, such as crossing the border with bodies found in the forest, Kasia tries to offer comfort and support while pointing out that she can identify her husband by his uniform number in the videos uploaded by activists on the internet. This is the third entry point for Green border: the activists, here led by the two sisters Marta (Frajczyk) and Zuku (Polak), who are joined by newcomer Julia (Ostaszewska), a psychiatrist whose presence is crucial to the group’s increasingly dangerous humanitarian efforts.
At 75, Holland has amassed a body of work of such depth that it is downright daunting. Early masterpieces Angry Harvest And Europe Europeher TV work with TheWire And The killingand current highlights such as track And Mr Jones are just starting points of her fascinating career. Holland has developed an impressive ability to maintain nerve-wracking tension, and her brutal, close-to-the-field depictions of trauma orchestrated by oppressive political structures that seek to manipulate the hearts and minds of some while dehumanizing others make Green border an angry, emotional masterpiece. And although the relatively optimistic ending is rather muted, Holland shows that the embers of compassion have not yet been completely extinguished from our collective psyche.
