In Green Border, director Agnieszka Holland is attempting to show us the wide swath of human behavior, from the inhumanly cruel to the generously kind, and everything in between. The film is set against the Polish-Belarusian border, where migrants from Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia all seek asylum from the horrific conflicts in their home counties. Scary stories have been told of the dangers of attempting to access the European Union through the Mediterranean Sea. The Belarusian government (encouraged by the country’s dictatorial leader, Alexander Lukashenko) puts out propaganda that it’s much easier to cross into the EU through the so-called “green border”. Many desperate families come to Belarus, misled by these claims, only to find themselves pawns in a political game when Belarus and Poland both seek to shirk responsibility, a high-stress clash that only brings out the worst in all involved.
Holland interweaves several stories involving different characters effected by this geopolitical crisis. First we’re introduced to a Syrian family flying into Belarus. The father, Bashir (Jalal Altawil), has been told by his brother that all he’ll need to do upon landing is get into a taxi that will deliver him and his family to Sweden, where he can reunite with said brother and flee their war-torn home. On the plane, they meet an Afghan woman named Leila (Behi Djanati Atai), who asks if she can join, and Bashir’s wife, Amina (Dalia Naous), can’t imagine why not. Their journey is almost immediately disrupted by armed Belarusian soldiers who pull over their taxi, dump them out and force them under the barbed wire fence in the exclusionary zone between the two countries. This is will be far from the last time that they cross the green border, as the two nations force – oftentimes aggressively – refugees back and forth.
Jan (Tomasz Wlosok) is a Polish border guard who’s pregnant wife is set to give birth soon. He’s remodeling a home for them to live in before the baby is born, but renovations prove longer to complete. Added to the stress, many migrants desperate for shelter, and looking for a place to hide out from the violent military, start squatting while he’s not around. Jan is a committed soldier, but he begins to blanch at the tactics of his fellow guards. Refugees are treated as less than human, mocked and beaten. Some of the women are as pregnant as his wife at home, and his conscience begins to plague him. Julia (Maja Ostaszewska) isn’t a soldier, but the migrant crisis occupies her mind as well. A widow living alone near the border, she longs to help activists who assist the abused refugees. She has the courage and is ready to make the necessary sacrifice, but will her contribution make a difference?
As much as Holland invests in every one of her characters, she doesn’t dare sentimentalize over their anguish, nor does she comparison shop on relative danger of the refugees versus the guards and activists. It properly presents the stakes that each of them face, and displays the drama accordingly. But Holland is interested in more than just narrative tension. The script – by Holland as well as Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko – is fueled by righteous rage over the blatant barbarism on display. Belarus has the excuse of being an outwardly racist nation led by a fascist, but Poland’s inclusion within the European Union comes with it an expectation of compassion, or at the very least a recognition of basic human rights. Refugees, courted by Belarus to create political turmoil for Poland, are dealt with like animals, amplified by the very obvious fact that they are black and brown, while the military is white.
Our story takes place in 2021, shortly after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was weaponized as an extra layer of xenophobia against foreign tourists. Holland brilliantly sets her themes explicitly without being didactic: the root of all this fear, violence, and paranoia is racism, particularly colorist racism. The fact that Bashir and his family are darker than the powder-white Poles makes it easier for that country to cast them back into despair. Human bodies are flung gracelessly over barbed wire fences, like unwanted leftovers. Any attempt at protest is met with a stealth beating. Desperate medical care is eschewed for “illegals”, and even the lucky few who can get in to see a doctor are left to be sitting ducks for a military that will round them up immediately and dump them back on the other side. It’s a robust, government-supported operation that no one human being can overcome, but plenty try.
Maja Ostaszewska’s performance as Julia will likely end up being one of the best performances of this year. Her work is measured and steady, but hauntingly passionate. Her character, Julia, is a therapist whose husband died of COVID. Facing the world alone, she has little headspace to ignore the reality that is overtaking her village. She meets a group of young activists who supply medical attention and food to migrants – like Leila and Bashir – and decides to offer her skills. Once in the group, she finds that they are also bound by bureaucratic rules that prevent them from helping in more immediate ways. The group’s coordinator, Marta (Monika Frajczyk), stresses following the rules, but Julia does not have that kind of patience. Julia proves to be more than a guilty liberal white woman, but an active and brave compatriot who is willing to risk her own freedoms if it means helping those more vulnerable.
The movie’s brilliance is apparent throughout, but it crescendos in the film’s five-minute coda, where we fast-forward to 2022, and Russia’s attack on Ukraine. We see a handful of our characters again, presented in a different context. These refugees, the white Ukranian refugees, meet no hostility. In fact, they meet no barriers at all. They’re in fact welcome. Holland still gives the Ukranians their humanity, and in a small window illustrates their own broken down humanity. But look in the eyes of the guards and the medical staff, and the dichotomy cannot be ignored. Many resources are utilized, many people brought in, and many weapons discharged in the prevention of Black and Brown migrants. This all falls away if you’re fleeing the correct country. It’s a move that may seem tacky with a less competent filmmaker, but Holland expertly draws the lines of human decency. Green Border boils down to a simple credo: All individuals are complex, but the collective behavior of the human race is actually quite simple.
Directed by Agnieszka Holland