As up-to-the-minute filmmaking goes, Agneiszka Holland’s take on the migrant crisis in northern Europe exudes a professionalism that tends to overwhelm its harrowing themes. Though the moral and humanitarian stakes are never in question, it’s easy to fall into the action-flick rhythms that Holland and her crack multinational team of activist-artists create with seeming ease. Time was obviously of the essence, since, reportedly, Holland wanted to commit to film as quickly as possible the tragedy engendered by Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko’s cynical 2021 invitation to refugees to come to his country as a stepping off point for easy entry into the EU as represented by the “green border” between Belarus and Poland, whose government didn’t want them but couldn’t admit it openly due to its EU commitments. Holland succeeded in that she began shooting the film in March 2023 and finished it before festival season. It’s crisis cinema made to order. 

Filmed in black-and-white presumably to add an extra measure of bleakness to the proceedings, the movie imparts an irresistible forward momentum that mirrors the desperation of its migrant protagonists, who are escaping repression and war in the Middle East and Africa. The sense of calm felt by the central extended middle class family from Syria as they fly to Belarus after paying good money to a broker is palpable, and you know as soon as they arrive at the airport and wait for their ride to the border that things will not go well. Holland and her co-screenwriters, Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko, telegraph the problems that will ensue by including a middle-aged female English teacher from Afghanistan escaping the Taliban who announces that she knew Poles through her brother back home and they were “decent people.” And sure enough, as soon as they get to the border, shots ring out and Belarussian soldiers force them through an opening in the razor-wire fence. They are now on their own and get shoved back and forth over the border by soldiers or guards on either side who have orders to make sure they don’t remain in their respective countries. Holland’s strategy is to show all the players in this game—the hapless, victimized migrants; the Polish border patrol guards who are just following orders; the Polish activists who do their best to keep the migrants alive long enough in the exclusion zone to get them actually into the country proper so they can claim asylum; and a widowed psychiatrist who acts as the overriding conscience of the film. 

The presentation is effective in showing how the outward humanitarian stance toward the migrants masks a virulent racism rooted in the population, especially at the end when Holland compares their cruel treatment to the initial Polish reaction to the invasion of white Ukraine. Holland’s strongest point in this regard is balancing the bureaucratic niceties of the Polish policy with how it plays out in reality, which often leads to death. The resulting set pieces, however, can suffer from a dramatic imperative that feels stagey, even when the tragedy is torn from actual stories. It’s easy to sit through the cliches about ineffectual, hypocritical liberals, but even the stuff about bone-headed working class stiffs getting played by the authorities is rife with short-cut stereotypes, because that’s what often happens when you’re pressed for time. 

In Polish, English, Arabic and French. Opens May 3 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Kino Cinema Shinjuku (03-5315-0978).

Green Border home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Metro Lato Sp. z o.o., Blick Productions SAS, Marlene Film Production s.r.o., Beluga Tree SA, Canal+ Polska S.A., dFlights Sp. z o.o., Ceska televize, Mazovia Institute of Culture