Cinema sometimes plays the role of awareness-raiser, memory aid, even whistleblower.
This is the case with the astonishing “Green Border”, by Agnieszka Holland, in theaters this Wednesday, which reminds us of a crisis that those who live far from Eastern countries have undoubtedly forgotten – even if its consequences directly concern them.
Since 2021, Belarus, guided by its Russian ally, has been organizing an enterprise to destabilize Europe using an unusual weapon: migrants.
The country actually charters planes from Iraq or Turkey in order to organize the transit of refugees – Syrians, Iraqis, etc. – towards its borders with Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
In these three countries, migratory flows have increased from a few hundred individuals per year until 2020 to more than 4,000, or even 10,000 since then.
But these clandestine transits take place in such conditions that the Polish filmmaker found material for a trying story.
And far from anchoring her film solely in the drama, she repeatedly makes it drift towards the thriller, even allowing herself, in certain passages, escapes towards the action film.
What she tells us leaves us speechless: along the Belarusian border, intersected by barbed wire walls and located in the hostile environment of the last primary forest in Europe, riddled with dangerous swampy areas, the refugees, who try majority to join the Northern countries (Sweden, Norway, etc.), become hostages both in the eyes of Belarusian soldiers and Polish border guards.
All very violent, they beat them severely and send them back and forth from one border to another.
Here are the migrants stuck, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, unable to move forward and risking death from hunger, thirst, or from the injuries inflicted on them.
A black and white that fits the plot
If the film turns out to be so exciting and moving, it is thanks to the cutting chosen by the director.
Broken into segments which each focus on a force present, the feature film first follows a family of refugees, then a border guard, then activists who try to rescue them, and finally a Polish woman from the region, Julia , who will, after an incident, do everything to help the refugees.
Dramatic and terrifying at first, “Green Border” turns into a nervous thriller when it sticks to the characters of Julia and the activists.
Some of whom, sort of anarchist punks who are afraid of nothing, take insane risks by sneering and making fun of the Polish soldiers.
To those who wonder why you chose to produce a fiction and not a documentary on this subject, the answer is simple: having become a lawless zone, the border zone of the three neighboring countries of Belarus is now prohibited to journalists, who are unceremoniously turned back at each attempted incursion.
And then, upon arrival, the effectiveness of a story that is certainly well documented but fictional proves its worth by stirring our guts, as did, on a similar subject, the recent “Me Captain”, from the Italian Matteo Garrone.
We can therefore thank Agnieszka Holland for her choices, including that of filming this incredible story in sumptuous black and white which fits perfectly with the plot and the topography of the places.
The filmmaker, previously nominated for an Oscar and winner of numerous awards (including the Special Jury Prize for this film in Berlin last year), renowned both for her auteur films (“Europa Europa”, “Fever”, “ the Plot”…) as well as his episodes of Hollywood series (“House of Cards”, “Cold Case”…), signs with “Green Border” his best feature film.
A youth film, at 75 years old.
Editor's note:
4/5
“Green Border”,
drama by Agnieszka Holland, with Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska… 2h32.