As we are permanently bombarded with news about the horrors of the world we are living in, we run the risk – as a precautionary measure – of losing our desire to understand what is happening behind these tragedies that are discussed by the mass media.

One subject that has been in the European media spotlight in recent years, even before the outbreak of war in Ukraine, was that of the tensions between Warsaw and Minski surrounding the migrants from the Middle East and Africa that Belarus allowed to, even encouraged to illegally cross the border into their neighboring country, an EU member state after they had arrived or, to be more precise, been flown into its territory.

This decision was widely regarded as an act of blackmailing, of exerting pressure on the European Union, masterminded by Russia and implemented by Belarus, its close ally, as part of a larger hybrid war.

Veteran Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland tackles this burning issue in her latest feature film, Green Border, and transforms it into a drama that is shot in a somber and imposing black-and-white, which calls to mind the war films of yesteryear (in fact, one of its shots makes a reference to Ivan’s Childhood, by Andrei Tarkovsky, thus paying a discreet homage.) Only this time around, the war is here and now.

Tragedy is no longer something abstract, or a simple piece of news. It takes the form of a handful of migrants who want to arrive in Western Europe via Minsk and who become prisoners on the border strip, a no man’s land between Belarus and Poland, as they are violently pushed back and forth over the barbed wire fences of both sides of the frontier, to the point of exhaustion and even death.

The better part of the film is told from within the midst of these people, who are victims of political machinations that they can’t even begin to grasp, and which are beyond their control. Here, Holland uses much force and overt empathy to depict their confusion, their suffering, and their misery. A cinema that is as classical as can be in terms of visual outline and direction, that runs close to the point of academism, but that is nonetheless profoundly humanistic (even despite the heavier strokes that the Polish filmmaker sometimes deploys).

Then, to add new layers, the perspective shifts. First, we enter the life of one of the Polish border guards and witness the dilemmas and inner turmoil brought on by the impossible situation that he finds himself in, caught between the very human feeling of weakness in the face of pain, and the duties imposed by his professional environment (which, of course, is subservient to political orders and seems to have xenophobic and nationalistic leanings). Later on, the main character becomes a female therapist, who decides to get involved in efforts to aid the migrants, alongside a group of activists.

Of course, the film is also a direct criticism of the Polish government’s policy towards these migrants (a policy that is the polar opposite of that towards the refugees that have fled the war in Ukraine, an image upon which the film closes). But Holland is striking even higher than that: she invites us to ponder whether (and how) humanism is still capable of existing nowadays, begging us to remember that the dramas that we were used to read about in history books or to watch in war movies are happening right now, here, right next to us, and that we can no longer look away from them.

The world premiere of “Green Border”  took place in the Official Competition at the 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival.

Ionuț Mareș

Journalist and film critic. Curator for some film festivals in Romania. At "Films in Frame" publishes interviews with both young and established filmmakers.