Although journalistic literalism weakens Agnieszka Holland’s cinematic story, The Green Border is still a film of intense emotion and painful truth. It is not only a terrifying tale of the fate of refugees but also a picture of an internally fractured Poland that will be difficult to put back together.
Among the many harrowing scenes to be found in Agnieszka Holland’s picture, one is particularly striking. The film’s epilogue, which consists of heartening images from the Polish-Ukrainian border, reminds us of the help Poles gave to Ukrainian refugees after 24 February 2022, taking nearly two million people under their roofs. By reconstructing this situation and juxtaposing it with the cruelty of the Polish-Belarusian border, Holland makes particularly painful accusations. On the one hand, she demonstrates the relativity of both situations and ridicules arguments about the threat posed by a group of several thousand refugees from the Polish-Belarusian border, while on the other, she makes the accusation (already raised in journalistic discussions earlier) of systemic racism – an accusation all the more painful because it is completely undiscussed in Poland.
Agnieszka Holland’s film provoked hysterical reactions even before its premiere, with disgraceful attacks directed against the director and her actors (comparing the film’s stars to Nazi collaborator Igo Sym is a testimony to sheer lunacy). A reading of The Green Border convinces one how unfounded the accusations made against the artist are – because Agnieszka Holland’s film is not a political manifesto or, even less so, an attempt to vilify the Polish border guards. It is a call for compassion and sensitivity to the drama of those who, through no fault of their own, became the object of a brutal political game and who, having been thrown from one side of the border to the other, died in inhuman conditions. Holland makes us look into their eyes, to see people just like us. And although her Green Border is not free of dramatic shortcomings or intellectual and journalistic simplifications, it forces us to face a problem that many would like to pass over in silence and forget.
If cinema has a social role to play, it is precisely to awaken from lethargy and to ask uncomfortable questions. After all, it is no coincidence that years later, it is Andrzej Munk’s Eroica and not Wanda Jakubowska’s Żołnierz zwycięstwa (Soldier of Victory), commissioned by the powers that be, that inspires discussions about Polish history, and that Agnieszka Holland’s metaphorical Gorączka (Fever) is a more truthful account of the Solidarity uprising than Andrzej Wajda’s enthusiastic Człowiek z żelaza (Man of Iron), marked by a political, nomen est omen fever.