Poland doesn’t come out un-pummeled but Belarus is made look totally brutal, brutalised and bankrupt of any human empathy in Agnieszka Holland’s scathing, searing GREEN BORDER.
The so called “green border” of the title is the treacherous and swampy forest frontier between Belarus and Poland. In this powerful film, refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are trapped in a geopolitical crisis cynically engineered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. These people are not illegals or queue jumpers, but passport carrying pawns in a hidden war.
Injustice fueled by xenophobia inspire a newly minted activist who has given up her comfortable life to interact with a young border guard over the nightmare plight of a Syrian family ping ponged by appalling political policy.
Like the best narrative films, GREEN BORDER distills the living essence of societies and their problems and instills a certain empathy, convincing us that people, no matter how far removed in custom and geography, are not that far removed from our own hearts of hope and family.
What GREEN BORDER depicts is a tragedy and one of the tragedies of our culture is that serious cinema like this is supported by only a tiny minority.
GREEN BORDER stars Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Behi Djanati Atai, Mohamad Al Rashi, Dalia Naous & Tomasz Włosok. Not a Hollywood star among them but their roles and performances resonate in our very souls.
GREEN BORDER invites us to open our eyes and hearts and challenges us to reflect on the moral choices that fall to ordinary people every day, a film that delivers quite a different perspective on a cost of living crisis. A life and death perspective that far too many are experiencing.
