In an exclusive interview for Romania, renowned Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland talks about her latest film, “Green Border”, which will have its Romanian premiere at TIFF (on June 15 and 23), the attacks she faced from the previous government in Warsaw, the role of the European Film Academy, which she chaired until May this year, and her early years as an aspiring director during the golden era of Polish cinema.

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It is rare for a film to be attacked by political leaders in a democratic European country, and for the director to fear for their safety. Yet it happened last fall in Poland, at the end of the conservative government led by the Law and Justice party (PiS), which lost the October elections to a coalition headed by the liberal Donald Tusk, the current prime minister (who has previously held the post from 2007 to 2014 and also served as President of the European Council).

The target of those attacks was the well-known filmmaker Agnieszka Holland (b. 1948). An experienced and respected director with a rich filmography, which focuses on history to a great extent, particularly that of her country, Agnieszka Holland chose to tackle in her latest film, Green Border (2023), winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, a current and hot topic: migration.

The script is based on real events that made European headlines – in 2021, thousands of people were stranded for a long time at the border between Poland and Belarus, the gateway to the European Union.

Belarusian authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko was then accused by Warsaw and the EU of using migrants from the Middle East and Africa, facilitating their passage to Europe to destabilise the EU bloc, as revenge for sanctions imposed on his regime.

In response to what was seen as blackmail by Minsk and indirectly by Moscow, Polish authorities created an exclusion zone around the border and installed a high barbed wire fence. They also mobilised thousands of soldiers and border guards to push migrants back from Polish territory into Belarus, all the while Belarusian authorities were forcing refugees back into Poland. According to media reports, at least 50 people lost their lives during this time. In parallel, a network of activists and locals emerged, providing migrants with food, clothing, medicines, and sometimes shelter. 

My main goal was not political, but humanistic, namely to show the human beings behind those numbers and crises.

The film is told from three perspectives that intertwine: a Syrian family stranded at the border, a Polish border guard torn by the duties he must fulfil, and a Polish activist offering help. Green Border is a drama shot in austere, imposing black-and-white, highlighting the human tragedies behind such a geopolitical crisis.

In this interview for Films in Frame, conducted via Zoom at the end of November 2023, ahead of the European Film Awards, where Green Border was nominated in three categories (European Film, European Director, and European Screenplay), Agnieszka Holland expressed her view that for over a decade, at least since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, migration has been “the biggest issue and challenge for the West and the whole world”.

“But when it reached my country, when this situation erupted at our border, I felt some kind of urge to see what was happening, especially when I realised that the response of the authoritarian government at the time is very dangerous. The fact that military forces use violence against civilians, and this is somehow legalised by the state, represents a dangerous precedent, which, as we see, can very easily spread across Europe. But my main goal was not political, but humanistic, namely to show the human beings behind those numbers and crises”, she explained.

According to the director, the reason behind opting for a polyphonic approach was “to show from different perspectives what that situation means to the people, what kind of choices they are facing, and how their choices interfere with the lives of others. So we found that multiple perspectives are more dramatically effective.”

The film was released in Polish theatres in September 2023 and strongly upset the government at the time, which accused Agnieszka Holland of presenting a distorted version of the events.

Showing that the plight of the migrants was also exacerbated by the Polish authorities’ violent rejection, the film essentially questions Warsaw’s official policy in that crisis.

According to the New York Times, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, chairman of the Law and Justice Party and Poland’s de facto leader at the time, said the film is proof of the director’s hatred against Poland and described Green Border as “shameful, repulsive, and disgusting”.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called it “a collection of blatant lies” that aims to “discredit us in the West, and divert attention from Poland’s glorious and key role in helping the fighting in Ukraine.”

Moreover, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, a member of the Catholic-nationalist political party Sovereign Poland, likened Agnieszka Holland to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, and compared her to “the Soviets and the Nazis” who “used propaganda films to destroy the image of Poland and Poles”.

The government also required cinemas to show a short video presenting the official position on the situation before screenings of Green Border. The film was not chosen as Poland’s submission for the Oscars, despite having the most potential to enter the race.

Every meeting with the audience after screenings was like a collective therapy session.

“I think that the situation around the film proved very well that the Polish state was heading towards autocracy and that it was not so different from the communist times in terms of freedom of speech and artistic expression. And that they viewed some contemporary and historical productions only as tools of propaganda. But I hope it’s over now because they lost the elections. The attacks, the campaign of hate orchestrated by the highest Polish authorities against me in September happened because the elections were approaching, and they had won once before on the migration issue, fueling a xenophobic and racist feeling of imminent danger at Poland’s borders. They hoped that by attacking my film, they would gain even more votes this time,” said the director.

“It was so absurd and unprecedented that people reacted in the opposite way. And the film, which is quite difficult, not only did great at the box office but also the public’s reaction was incredible. Every meeting with the audience after screenings was like a collective therapy session. So the film also played an important social role, it was not just an entertainment or artistic experience. It’s impossible to measure the role our film played in the election results, but I believe there was a small role, albeit different from what the authorities had imagined,” she added.

According to the director, the film gathered 800,000 viewers (i.e. in Poland, the most successful local films, especially commercial comedies, generally revolve around this figure), but the number would have been higher if schools had not been banned from sending students to see it.

Agnieszka Holland admits that the attacks affected her: “When I travelled with the film for its premiere in areas near the border, I was attacked by some groups of protesters. And I received a lot of threats, mostly anonymous. So we decided to have security guards with me during the September travels, because you never know. The atmosphere was so heated that you don’t know if you might run into a troubled person or a fanatic who acts on those hateful words.”

The filmmaker knows that the situation in Poland is not an exception and that there are growing right-wing nationalist and populist movements in other European countries as well as in the US.

“In the Netherlands, openly anti-EU, xenophobic, and racist politicians won the elections. We have Orban in Hungary, who is untouchable. Then, Germany, where they (i.e. the extremists from Alternative for Germany) became the second party. Sweden as well. God knows who will win the election in France next, Marine Le Pen is on the rise. There is also the danger that Donald Trump will become US president again. We are in a big mess, and I haven’t even mentioned the war in Ukraine and the current situation in Israel and Gaza,” said Agnieszka Holland.

“So the crises are numerous. And in such crises, if the democratic and liberal political class is ineffective, lazy, and lacks courage, the populists take over because they have answers, easy answers, to all these crises. We know these easy answers are lies, but people want to feel safe,” explained the director.

In her view, cinema is rich and can give a personal voice to the author, to tell stories that are pure entertainment or to experiment formally. “I don’t want to say that all cinema has to be politically or socially engaged. But in times like these, if cinema turns its back on such subjects and issues, it somehow becomes unimportant. Cinema also has to be the voice, especially since I think that without imagination, we cannot win the future, and cinema is imagination.”

The new political situation in Europe and around Europe raises new questions for EFA about whether we should take a stand on political issues.

In 2020, Agnieszka Holland replaced Wim Wenders to become the first woman president of the European Film Academy. This year, she decided to step down, so in May, she was succeeded in the position – which is largely an honorary role but holds a strong symbolic power – by French actress Juliette Binoche.

Asked what the EFA’s role should be in the coming years, the Polish director admitted that there needs to be a discussion about it.

“The goal of the EFA is mainly to promote European cinema, within Europe and, if possible, outside it. To give visibility to the films and connect professionals, filmmakers, and artists from all over Europe in an organisation where they can collaborate and exchange ideas. And it works, but not perfectly. The new political situation in Europe and around Europe raises new questions about whether we should take a stand on political issues. And if we take a stand, we have to take into consideration that our members come from different countries, and some of these countries are practically at war. Should we become some kind of Olympus, where the gods look at what is happening in the world and think it’s not important? Probably. At the same time, it goes against my belief in the power of cinema. So I’m torn. I wonder if I am the right person to be the face of the organisation,” said Agnieszka Holland.

In her opinion, “cinema is still the best tool to feel Europe, to understand Europe, to know more about Europe”, “a continent of very different cultures, historical identities and languages, which is reflected in films”.

The current young generation of filmmakers lacks that sense of community, where there was no jealousy among filmmakers.

Agnieszka Holland began her career in the 1970s as an assistant to directors Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda. Shortly before the 1981 imposition of Martial Law in Poland, she emigrated to France. Her most well-known films include Europa Europa (1990), for which she won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, Angry Harvest (1985) and In Darkness (2011), both of which were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. All three titles deal with themes related to World War II and the Holocaust.

Asked about her early days in cinema, when the so-called cinema of moral anxiety was emerging in Poland, Agnieszka Holland admits to feeling nostalgic.

“It was great to be so close to the great filmmakers of the previous generation and that kind of exchange, their mutual trust and enrichment. It was very unique. I never felt that afterwards. The current young generation of filmmakers lacks that sense of community, where there was no jealousy among filmmakers, where older filmmakers were our great inspiration, and we tried to be an inspiration to them,” she reminisced.

“The ’70s, when I started making films, were probably the best period for Polish cinema in the 20th century. Even though there was communism, censorship, and the authorities could ban your film, that period was one of freedom for me. We knew that we had some kind of inner freedom and that what we were doing spoke to people. It’s really important for the audience, who are intelligent and can read beyond complicated cinematic language, symbols, and metaphors. So somehow, it was the best period of my life as a filmmaker,” concluded Agnieszka Holland.

Main Photo Source:  Marilla Sicilia/Archivio Marilla Sicilia/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images

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.