GREEN BORDER - Mark Reviews Movies

Green Border, Kino Lorber

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | June 20, 2024

A grim look at the ongoing migrant crisis around the world, Green Border focuses exclusively on the situation in Poland, along the border with neighboring and hostile Belarus. The whole film forces us to consider the very notion of what a "migrant crisis" actually means, because the definition changes depending on the perspective from which it's looked.

In Belarus, it's more or less manufactured, using propaganda in the Middle East and Africa to promise safe passage from the country into Poland and, from there, to anywhere else in the European Union. Some have referred to this tactic as a form of warfare, which essentially transforms human beings into a type of political weapon.

In Poland, the crisis is seen in that way, while the migrants themselves, often refugees from conflicts in places like Syria, are perceived and treated as unwelcome guests. It doesn't matter that most of these migrants have no interest in remaining or desire to stay in Poland. If they're not wanted and seen as a potential weapon, it's only a matter of time before these human beings are also perceived as something to be disposed of by almost any means necessary.

That co-writer/director Agnieszka Holland's film makes the political climate of this crisis clear is impressive, especially since the story takes an on-the-ground perspective of its specific events and the wider backdrop that perpetuates it. More importantly, the story is entirely a human one, in that it observes the consequences of policies, which inherently dehumanize entire groups of people based on their countries of origin and the colors of their skin and the languages they speak and their uncertain residential status, through the eyes of multiple participants. We come to understand each of those perspectives, as harrowingly sympathetic or uncomfortably prejudiced as they may be.

Holland and her co-screenwriters, Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Lazarkiewicz, may not have the answers to how to bridge this ideological divide between those who see migrants as people and those who do not, for assorted political rationales that range from racism to the belief that expelling migrants is in a necessity for national defense. To expect such solutions from a film would be unfair, of course, but the filmmakers definitely ask the right questions here, especially during the film's haunting epilogue.

Well before that, though, Holland begins this story, set in 2021, with the correct point of view. It's of a family of six—Bashir (Jalal Altwail) and his wife Amina (Dalia Naous), well as their three children, including an infant, and the kids' paternal Grandpa (Mohamad Al Rashi). Their journey, attempting to reunite with Bashir's brother and start a new life in Athens, begins on a commercial flight from Damascus to Minsk, where they meet Leila (Behi Djanati Atai), a fellow refugee escaping the Taliban in Afghanistan.

From the airport, the group is driven to the middle of a vast forest, where Belarusian soldiers hurry and force them under a fence of barbed wire. Now in Poland, it should only be a matter of finding their next transport outside the woods, but before the party can navigate through the trees and swamps of the forest (Tomasz Naumiuk's stark black-and-white cinematography gives the location a nightmarish quality), they're discovered by Polish border guards, who initially treat them kindly and promise to help. Instead, the agents bring them right back to the border and drive them into Belarus again.

The back-and-forth of the refugees' situation is at the center of the story for a while. The family and their new partner join others, who explain how Belarusian soldiers and Polish guards have moved them between countries multiple times—with no consideration for their health, offering little or no food and water, destroying the charging ports of any cellphone they find, physically attacking anyone who dares to refuse the order or even hesitates.

There's an intrinsic absurdity to the actions of both sides of this international conflict, although the film portrays the Belarusians and the Poles as single-minded entities, threatening each other constantly but being so impotent in fighting directly that their aggression is transferred to the migrants. There's a horrifying moment when members of the Polish border patrol throw a pregnant woman over the tall wall of barbed wire, as if they're playing a game in which a living human body is the ball.

The narrative never loses track of this main group, as they separate at one point, but it does expand beyond the refugees' perspective to find two oppositional ones. On one side is Jan (Tomasz Włosok), a rookie border guard in Poland who just wants to make a good life for his wife (played by Malwina Buss) and the baby she'll be having soon. He's a willing participant in this system, to be sure, but through this character, the film's critique of policy and bureaucracy stemmed in xenophobia becomes one of simple conscience.

A similar raising of conscience happens to Julia (Maja Ostaszewska), a widowed, middle-aged therapist who becomes involved in an activist aid organization after rescuing a migrant from the swamp near her house (There's more to that event, which ties directly to the first family's story). It's run by two sisters, Marta (Monika Frajczyk) and Zuku (Jasmina Polak), who disagree about how much the group should be doing, and as Julia sees the limitations of the organization's legally mandated rules, she starts finding ways to bypass those rules and the law by way of little acts of individual decency. There is something potently hopeful in both stories beyond the migrant family's tale, as Holland argues that even the smallest deed—including inaction against the system and in favor of those in need—can make a difference.

Green Border, though, doesn't wear rose-tinted glasses in that respect. No, the film recognizes the inadequacy of such a simple philosophy of basic decency in the face of systematic injustice and prejudice, too. The film's final note is a powerful scene that, in portraying the way those same systems rally and work together for a different group of refugees, serves as an explicit contrast to everything that has come before it. It's overt hypocrisy, yes, but at its heart is the most important question here: Why is one group in need treated as worthy of it, while another is not?

Back to Home

Buy Related Products