Patrick Mulcahy on a gripping asylum drama
For those who despair that summer in the cinema is all CGI and sequels, the gripping asylum drama Green Border is a welcome relief. It puts a human face on that most contentious of subjects, illegal migration, and demonstrates that states, rather than those individuals seeking to escape persecution and poverty, are the ones most likely guilty of illegality. It is an angry film, one that explores the maintenance of borders between countries but also the border between complicity and revolt. Whilst harrowing in some sequences, it is also full of hope, that people will refuse to be defined by the racism of their governments.
Director Agnieszka Holland, working with two (younger) co-directors, Kamila Tarabura and Katarzyna Warzecha, from a screenplay that she co-wrote with Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Lazarkiewicz-Sieczko, has fashioned a film that has drawn the ire of the Polish Government, who insisted that on release on 22 September 2023, it be prefaced in cinemas by a two-minute film celebrating the important work done by Polish border guards – a request rejected by most cinemas. Green Border deals very specifically with the Polish-Belarus border and Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s 2021 invitation to desperate migrants from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan to come to his country. On arrival, they were herded across the border into Poland, ostensibly given hope, only to see it be taken away. Holland and her team tackle the subject from four points of view: through the eyes of a Syrian family, a border guard, a group of activists and a widowed psychiatrist, Julia (Maja Ostaszewska), creating a vivid version of events in the “exclusion zone” – land between Belarus and Poland – in which migrants find themselves.
Right from the outset, Holland drains the film of colour to suggest a drama taking place in the 1940s rather than the 2020s. The issue of illegal migration is often presented in black and white terms – refugees threatening our way of life – with the migrants themselves being objectified, as if viewed through a filter. By representing that filter, Holland and her team challenge it. Can we really justify exclusion of those who need our help?
Holland also humanises those seeking refuge. A Syrian child knocks a pair of glasses off the lap of a woman sitting next to him in order to wake her up and ask for her seat so that he may stare out of an airplane window. The woman, Leila (Behi Djanati Atai) does not speak Arabic but is addressed in English by the child’s grandfather. The passengers are told that it is minus two degrees outside and wished a pleasant day, the final time they are treated as human beings. The rest of the time, they are weapons of war between Russia – using its satellite states – and the European Union. Over the course of the film, Leila and three generations of a Syrian family whom she joins, will cross barbed wire multiple times, endure dehydration, starvation, exploitation and, for some of them, an indifferent death. Holland doesn’t need to use music to engage our emotions. We understand how the process is supposed to end.
“If you see a dead body, get rid of it,” Jan, a young border guard (Tomasz Wlosok) is told. He and his colleagues are on the front line, trained to gain the confidence of refugees before returning them to Belarus. Jan’s wife is expecting their first child, a girl. Her access to medical facilities contrasts with those of the migrants; a woman from an African country is denied medical care, after an assessment by a doctor working with an activist group. The tall, thick woods, where much of the film is set, mask atrocities of indifference – uncounted deaths.
Julia witnesses this first hand after discovering a woman and a teenager in a swamp. She can help the woman; the teenager, already unconscious, is swallowed by the swamp. The woman receives medical treatment but then is taken away. We later discover that she dies. However, her pleas – her English – stays with us. Holland makes sure that we don’t forget any of the victims.
The activists have a protocol – they can collect asylum claims on site but cannot offer to move any refugees. Their interventions, frowned upon by the police, ensure that the plight of these people is documented. However, when a Moroccan man requiring medical treatment is left behind, and is later discovered to have been taken away, the limits of the activist group is tested. Julia understands that certain laws need to be broken.
There is an extended scene in which a group of three African migrants are given shelter in the basement of a wealthy man’s flat. They are Muslim and anxious that the food that they are given is Halal. Holland shows the point at which respect is restored to them. They perform a popular French rap song, bringing it to life.
The film’s epilogue shows what a compassionate process looks like. We are shown Ukrainian refugees being accepted into the country, even with toys and pets. Their distress over their displacement is the same, but they are welcomed. When Julia has to demonstrate that she’s Polish, she recites the Lord’s Prayer at a police officer, reminding him of the Christian values every Polish citizen is supposed to embody. This scene, along with an image of a Syrian family waiting by a wall emblazoned with the European Union flag, is a reminder of shared values conveniently ignored.