‘Green Border’ Review – An Urgent And Impactful Story On The European Border Crisis

Films that capture timely, real-world circumstances are crucial to our understanding of what is happening all across the globe. We hear about global issues and tragedies all the time, but with so much news it’s hard to let something sink in without seeing it for ourselves. One of the most moving and impactful films of the 2020s, Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, had its world premiere at last year’s Venice Film Festival, appeared in Toronto and New York’s festivals, and finally released fully in the United States. Green Border tracks the intertwining lives of a family of escapees from Afghanistan who have been tricked and lured into a back and forth between Poland and Belarus, a Polish border guard, and activists trying everything they can to assist those caught in peril. The film is a mortifying portrait of what is happening right now at the border of Poland and Belarus.

The film is shot in black-and-white, and if you didn’t know any better you would think the story takes place decades ago. This signaling to films of the past is truly devastating when you remember that it is set in the here and now. This isn’t supposed to be a fictional documentation of history, but an urgent plea for the plight of the present. Holland spent hours upon hours of hard work researching and documenting the border crisis, and it clearly pays off throughout the film, showing off a variety of disturbing images and scenes that only someone in the know could get on the screen. Holland’s direction and care in this film can be felt profoundly at every stage, leaving room for scenes to breathe and not rush to the next segment. Clocking in at 147 minutes, Green Border is a daunting, yet necessary movie to sit through. The longer it goes, the more each tragedy sets in. You’re forced to think about what you’ve just seen, with little distraction to keep your mind elsewhere. 

The most compelling piece of this film is the way the story drifts off to spend significant time with characters outside the main family we meet at the start. Large swaths of time are spent with one of the border guards, Jan (Tomasz Wlosok), in his off time, showing us the ramifications of his actions and inaction at the border on his personal life and relationships. His character is key to understanding the attitude of the Polish guards and how these tragedies can keep happening day after day. We also spend a lot of time in the latter half of the movie with Julia (Maja Ostaszewska), a psychiatrist who gets heavily involved with a group of immigration activists after an encounter with Leila (Behi Djanati Atai), a woman who gets roped in with the family trying to make it to the European Union from the start of the film. Jan and Julia are not just side characters necessary to move the plot along but are integral to understanding the crisis as a whole. We are given examples of forces on either side and those caught in the middle of these forces. 

It’s difficult to do Holland’s on-screen achievements justice with mere words. The movie is unbelievably raw and real, using little to no score in most scenes so as to not take away from the horrors of violence and abuse that are committed against these refugees. They’re all unfairly and inexplicably used as simple political pawns, like pieces on a chess board, with no thought or belief that they are people suffering and just looking for a better life. The film achieves its goal, leaving no doubt that there must be a call to action to help the thousands of people flooding the European border as they escape tumultuous situations elsewhere. Humans, regardless of where they are from, deserve to be treated with respect, care, and empathy, not as means for political gain or antagonization. Green Border is as urgent a picture as you’ll ever see, and it begs to be seen in order to bring about change in our current world.

Green Border is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Kino Lorber.