Green Border

6/22/2024

This is the second film I've seen this week with Tomasz Wlosok. Earlier, he was in Julia von Heinz's tragic-comedy "Treasure" (2024) with a far lighter and fluffier role than he has here, as a Polish border guard. He is part of a team charged with repelling refugees trying to cross into the EU from Belarus. On that front, we are introduced to travellers who have been lulled into thinking their flight from Syria and Afghanistan will be a dawdle. An expensive one, yes, but a straightforward flight to Minsk on a comfortable Turkish aircraft then a bus to Poland thence on to wherever. Sadly, they soon realise that their bought-and-paid-for journey merely inserts them into a game of human table tennis between the military on both sides of a border - only it's coiled barbed wire rather than a ne

8/24/2024

Escaping tyranny to find a better life is a process frequently riddled with challenges, frustrations and desperate measures. So, when refugees hear about an allegedly credible way to more easily escape their circumstances and make their way to freedom, they often enthusiastically jump at the chance to avail themselves of the opportunity. Such was the case in 2021 with the supposedly unblemished promise accorded the “green border” crossing from Belarus into Poland, a port of entry into the European Union said to offer a comparatively less problematic escape route for those fleeing the Middle East and Africa. However, given that neither nation wanted to deal with a flood of refugees at the time, combined with swirling rumors that the new arrivals posed a serious security threat to the well-b

11/20/2024

For audiences who see “refugee” as just a headline in a newspaper, GREEN BORDER changes everything. It's an urgent, extraordinary film that spears your heart like an arrow. Winner of seven separate prizes at the Venice Film Festival, Green Border recognises that, to put it bluntly, the refugee crisis is a mess that’s too easily written off as “somebody else’s problem.” To break through that, Polish master filmmaker Agnieszka Holland zooms into just a handful of characters, and manages to make a statement with almost every frame. The handheld camerawork lends Green Border a realism, while the black & white imagery lends it a foreboding – the sense that this is living history; a shameful chapter of Europe’s recent past that somehow, we’re still allowing to take place today. We may n