Review: Green Border is a surprisingly brave film

Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland’s extraordinary war drama Green Border It is not specifically about any of the wars, particularly those in Ukraine and the Middle East, currently at the forefront of our consciousness. Still, the horrors it depicts – as well as the balm it gives us, in the form of resistance workers fighting for basic human rights – take place on a battlefield that is both ideological and visceral. It may seem like a fool’s errand to try to persuade even the most hardcore viewers to watch a serious film about the plight of refugees trying to enter Europe from the Middle East and Africa. But Holland’s film, though sometimes difficult to watch, is so well made and so in tune with all the things we react to as humans who care about the intertwining of art and real life, that it is ultimately more joyful than How disheartening. Sometimes movies about difficult subjects end up being such brutal experiences that you almost wish you hadn’t seen them. Green Border It’s the opposite: You’re likely to feel encouraged and galvanized, and also a little sadder and wiser. It’s a quiet masterstroke, a film that won the special jury prize at Venice last year; now, following its release in North America, it’s poised to be one of this year’s best films.

Shot in elegant, straightforward black and white, Green Border initially focuses on a family leaving their home in Syria in the fall of 2021: Bashir (Jalal Altawil) and Amina (Dalia Naous) and their three young children, the youngest still without a child, have lost everything at home. They, along with Bashir’s elderly father (Al Rashi Mohamad), leave for a new life in Sweden, with Bashir’s brother. The plan to get there seems simple: they boarded a flight to Belarus; Once they land, a car arranged and paid for by Bashir’s brother will accompany them to the Polish border and, from there, the journey to Sweden will be easy. Leila (Behi Djanati Atai), a middle-aged teacher from Afghanistan who they befriended on the plane, joins them – at first she seems like a nuisance, but her courage, plus the euros she keeps in her purse, will prove invaluable. .

Although the group disembarks and meets their driver without incident, they immediately sense something is wrong when they reach a checkpoint, and their driver, although already paid, angrily demands money to bribe the guards. The family is then forced to cross a barbed wire fence – they are now on the border, in Poland, but their relief is short-lived. When Leila approaches a farmer to ask for food and water – the family spent days without any of them – he answers. Then he makes a phone call and it is only a matter of time before the group is detained by the Polish police, only to be handed over to the border guards. Bashir and his family, along with Leila, are put on a truck, along with others also seeking asylum, and returned to the Belarusian border, where they are forced to return. Belarusians don’t want them, and neither do Poles; Bashir’s family and the others who were in that truck – including a heavily pregnant African woman – are pawns of the two countries, one a member of the European Union and the other an ally of Russia, engaged in a battle of will and rancor.

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The border police on both sides are cruel and sadistic. The natural world is not a friend either: in one of the film’s most painful scenes, a swamp in a Polish forest becomes a death trap. It’s a horrible moment, but Holland guides us through it with something that feels like gentleness: We feel the weight of it, but like the characters she drew so skillfully, we know there’s nowhere to go but forward. Holland, who co-wrote the script with Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Lazarkiewicz, expands the story to draw on the experiences of a Polish border guard, Jan (Tomasz Wlosok), whose training has resulted in a kind of dehumanization that he may or may not be capable of. . to overcome. And a group of underground Polish rescuers do everything they can to help the refugees, including providing basic medical care, although their powers are limited. Yet when they appear in the forest where the refugees hide, terrified and hungry, it is like a cavalry of kindness: they come with their supplies of soup and water, as well as simple things like bandages and toys to amuse the children. . They massage and bandage bruised and bloody feet; the pregnant woman undergoes an ultrasound, thanks to the workers’ portable equipment. Holland makes you feel the weight and inestimable value of the grace they bring to a horrible situation. It’s a reminder that for all the people who seek only to cause harm in the world, there are still those who will risk their own lives to help.

That’s a lot for one movie to carry, but Green Border do it gracefully. There is never anything hypocritical or preachy about it. This is Holland’s gift, as she has proven over decades of filmmaking, dating back to the 1990 Holocaust drama EuropeEurope—the film that brought him a worldwide audience—to more recent films, like 2017’s environmental parable Spoor. (I marvel when I remember that she also gave us the 1993 adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book The secret Garden, one of the most beautiful children’s films ever made.)

Green Frontier, unsurprisingly, he was condemned by the right in his home country of the Netherlands. When he won the jury prize in Venice, Poland’s then Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro, compared him to Nazi propaganda. But Green Border also became a box office success in Poland, and not long after its release last fall, a state election ousted Ziobro and other right-wing politicians who had condemned the film. The point isn’t necessarily that films can move the needle, although perhaps sometimes they can. It’s just that filmmakers who care can also inspire audiences to care. The Netherlands was moved to do Green Border following the 2015 refugee crisis, when more than a million people, many from Syria, flocked to Europe seeking asylum. It is a work that combines compassion with art in such a pure way that there is no way to separate them. This is a bold film that also makes us feel braver. And there is not a citizen of the world who cannot use some of it now.