Programme Notes: Green Border

No human being is illegal. 

When Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border was premiering at the Venice Film Festival in September 2023, it received a 15-minute standing ovation. When it was premiering in Poland a few weeks later, the then ultra-right-wing government, led by the Law and Justice party (PiS), was comparing the director to Nazis[1]. The party, which was then voted out by Poles in the general election in October 2023, would call any critics of their policies anti-Polish, and made every effort to ban the showings of the film in Poland. Interestingly enough, it is believed that those who opposed Green Border the most, had likely not even seen it.[2]

Directing a film with a strong message opposing Nazi-like policies only to be called a Nazi is astoundingly ironic. But modern Polish politics is full of paradoxes, especially when it comes to the situation of refugees on the Belarusian-Polish border. According to the Polish law, not helping anyone whose life or health is in danger is a crime – but so is helping refugees on the Belarusian border, as the Polish authorities treated (and, in some cases, still do treat) providing water and medical help to those in need as facilitating unlawful stay in Poland.[3] Take your pick: would you rather be prosecuted for leaving people to their death, or for helping them?

The situation of those trying to cross the green border – meaning a weakly protected section of a national border, typically located in woodlands or meadows – has been politicised from the very beginning. We hear it loud and clear in the film, when Kasia (played by Malwina Buss) tells Julia (Maja Ostaszewska) that the refugees (referred to only as ‘they,’ which further highlights the othering of those escaping their countries) are ‘a weapon of Lukashenko.’ That once you let those people into Poland, ‘they will come by the thousands.’ In Holland’s film, refugees themselves are also told it directly: one of the activists tries to explain to them that the safe passage they had been promised was, in fact, a lie. That the crossing of the border is part of Lukashenko’s plan to weaken the EU border.

Pawns in a political game or not, these are real people, with real threats to their lives. Not providing them with help because an authoritarian regime is using their misery is immoral and illogical – after all, how can one be held responsible for the actions of the Belarusian government? Using this political reality as a way to discredit refugees’ plight might as well be called victim-blaming.

As we see in the beginning of the film, authoritarian regimes are not the only ones benefiting from human misery: for some, helping refugees reach the Polish-Belarusian border is extremely profitable. In 2021, travel agencies from Jordan, Iraq, Türkiye and Belarus advertised ‘trips to Belarus’ with prices ranging from 1,000 to 3,500 dollars per person (although the prices have likely increased since). In order to get to the border itself, people are then faced with additional fees, even though they had already paid a hefty price for the crossing.[4] This is what happens to Bashir (Jalal Al Tawil), his family and Leila (Behi Djanati Atai), when out of the blue they are told that if they want to continue their journey, they must pay 300 dollars. It is clear that the driver and the border guard had agreed on this fee to profit from the situation. This kind of a ‘deal,’ based on transporting people to another country and forcing them to pay fees additional to what had been agreed previously, has its own name that we are all familiar with: simply put, it is human trafficking.

Green Border shows the polarisation in the Polish society, which sadly can be seen across the whole of Europe. On one hand, we have people like Bogdan (Maciej Stuhr) who blames his poor mental health and low sex drive on the political situation in Poland (it is worth noting that in 2021 the actor and his wife actually took in a family of Chechnyan refugees under their roof).[5] On the other hand – those who believe the governmental propaganda, or are simply too scared to act. Jan (Tomasz Włosok), the young border guard, whose wife is expecting their first child, cannot be described clearly as evil or indifferent to the situation. At first, Jan is shocked when he sees how his colleagues treat refugees. Later, he seems to have grown used to it, but has he really? We can see that the stress of his job and the constant repetition of traumatic events begin to weigh on him. And it is the same for many guards on the Polish-Belarusian border. As one of them said in the 2023 article published by the Polish publication OKO.press, ‘sometimes the only thing I can really do is to look away’ – and that little, or perhaps big, act of defiance is exactly what Jan does in the end.[6]  

It has been almost three years, but the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border has not changed much. Just like in the case of Leila, border guards still refuse (certain) asylum applications. Polish children as young as seven-years-old still get traumatised by finding (certain) human remains in their local woods[7].  The new, presumably more progressive, government still practises pushbacks on (certain) borders[8].   

Why am I placing so much emphasis on the word ‘certain’? The ending of Holland’s film makes it clear: for the Polish government, and many of my compatriots, the legitimacy of one’s need for asylum and even the right to live is judged purely by the colour of their skin. The situation on the Polish-Belarusian green border could be easily solved. According to Paulina Bownik, the medical doctor heavily involved in refugee activism in the area, we must simply act according to the law – as we have seen done on Poland’s border with Ukraine.[9]   

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