Interview by Eva van de Rakt, end of November 2023
Eva van de Rakt: Your film Green Border bluntly shows the situation of refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the border region between Belarus and Poland. What motivated you to make this film?
Agnieszka Holland: I wanted to show reality. What is going on at the Polish-Belarusian border is a kind of test, a laboratory of violence and lies. The state, for wider political reasons, legalizes violence against civilians as the right answer to a humanitarian crisis. It is not important to me whether that crisis was provoked by hostile regimes or not. The question is whether we care about human rights and human lives. The Polish–Belarusian border is no exception. The entire EU is turning into a kind of fortress and, due to a fear of mass migration and the rise of populist and fascist parties, accepts violence at sea and on land as the easiest solution.
People seeking protection are exposed to violence from border guards on both sides of the fence. They are chased back and forth in the forest, victims of brutal pushbacks in a lawless space. Some of the actors have had personal experience of being a refugee. How did you work with refugees to include their stories and perspectives in the film?
We conducted extensive research when writing the script. We read a lot, talked to refugees, activists, locals, and border guards as well. By working with actors who had refugee or activist experience, we were able to craft the details and background of the story. They brought their specific knowledge and emotions to the film.
How did the refugees whose stories you tell react to the film?
The general reaction to the film, from those who experienced similar situations and from the viewers who barely knew what is going on before seeing the film, was highly emotional. The people whose story we tell also thanked us for making this film. They found it to be very true, neither manipulative nor exaggerated.
In the film, you show many different facets of the Polish characters and how helplessness, despair, and inner turmoil determine their actions. For instance, there is a border guard who is struggling with his conscience. There are conflicts arising between the activists as they deliberate to what extent they have to defy the instructions of the Polish authorities to save the lives of those seeking protection. In your opinion, what role do civic engagement and civil courage play in the current situation?
All help was and still is in the hands of civil society, activists, locals turned activists because of the situation, connections of friends of friends who have been forced to make their own decisions in the absence of law, often risking trouble as the state has been criminalizing their assistance. It is very tiring and frustrating. Many activists are suffering from post-traumatic stress. However, they keep doing it, knowing no one else will if they don’t. Some have been doing this day after day, night after night for the last two years. They are looking for the missing. But instead of living people, they often only find corpses.
Toward the end of the film, you show the very different behavior of Polish border guards and citizens toward refugees from Ukraine. Why do you think there are such diametrically opposed attitudes of rejection and harshness on the one hand and empathy and helpfulness on the other?
It is much easier for Poles to identify with Ukrainian suffering. Geographical closeness, the similarity of the language, culture, the common enemy Russia, and the fact that in this case the government is supporting their action instead of criminalizing it. In the rejection and the harshness, racism against refugees who do not come from Ukraine plays a role. Racism is coming back everywhere in the world. What we believed to belong to the past is coming back at a dangerous speed.
The Polish Law and Justice party (PiS) has sharply criticized your film. How has the government’s campaign against the film affected your life?
I was expecting hostile reactions and that the government would try to use the film for electoral means, spreading a hateful nationalistic campaign against refugees. I was also expecting attacks on myself. But the extent was surprising. The president, prime minister, the head of the ruling party, the minister of justice, and so on, all jumped on me with absurd accusations. That I am a traitor, Nazi, Goebbels, Hitler, Stalin, and Putin. They overdid it, leading to the overall effect that we profited, politically, and at the box office. However, we were afraid that these hateful words could trigger real aggression, so I shortened my stay in Poland around the time of the movie premiere and hired security guards. Fortunately, the democratic coalition won the election, which is almost a miracle, since PiS was doing all it could to make it impossible. After the elections, the situation calmed down for me.
The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival before the parliamentary elections in Poland on October 15, 2023. How was Green Border received in Poland?
It was a huge success, at the box office and in terms of the responses by film critics and viewers. I’ve never had such powerful reactions before. So emotional, so morally challenging. We are really proud we made the film with all our honesty and courage and we were completely satisfied when we showed it to our audience.
In which other countries has the movie been shown so far?
As part of festivals, the film only premiered in Poland and the Czech Republic so far. It will feature in more countries in the first few months of 2024, first in Germany, Italy, France, and the Benelux countries and after that in Spain, Britain, the US, and other countries.
What reactions are you hoping for in Germany?
The majority of migrants who succeeded in escaping the trap at the Polish–Belarusian border ended up in Germany. It is also your story, yours, and that of your new fellow citizens. Migration is one of the crucial issues and challenges for Europe’s future. I hope the German audience will be sensitive to the topic and sensitive to the humanistic dimension of our story.
What do you think needs to change in EU migration and asylum policy?
Everything. There has to be global, honest collaboration. We cannot put our head in the sand again, hoping that walls or external dictators will keep the situation away from us.
Your film gets under the viewers’ skin and rattles audiences; it only shows a few glimpses of hope, for instance when young refugees and Polish teenagers sing a French song together. What gives you hope for the future of Europe?
Youth. Art. Imagination. And ‒ make empathy great again! We are able to open our hearts and homes to strangers. However, we are not doing it ‒ not because we do not have the resources, but because we do not want to.
Eva van de Rakt is Head of the Division EU/North America at the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
The director: Agnieszka Holland was born in Warsaw in 1948. She studied film at the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague and began her film career in 1971 as assistant director to Krzysztof Zanussi. Over the course of her career, she has been nominated for three Academy Awards: in 1985, for Bitter Harvest (Best Foreign Language Film), in 1990 for Europa, Europa (Best Adapted Screenplay), and in 2012 for In Darkness (Best Foreign Language Film). Holland’s numerous award-winning feature films include Olivier, Olivier (1992), The Secret Garden (1993), Total Eclipse (1995), Julie Walking Home (2001), Spoor (2017), Mr Jones (2019), and Charlatan (2020). She has also directed high-profile television series such as Treme and House of Cards.
The Film: It is the year 2021. Lured by the promises of the Belarusian dictator Lukashenko, Bashir and Amina and their Syrian family, like many other refugees, booked a flight to Minsk to cross the green border to Poland and then get to their relatives in Sweden. But the promise ends up being a trap. Alongside thousands of others, the family is stuck in the swampy no man’s land between Poland and Belarus, jostled back and forth by border guards of both countries in the hermetically sealed restricted area, cut off from any help. A polyphonic drama between hope and despair, cynicism, and humanity is unfolding at the border. We cannot look away. This is a matter of life or death. The film opened in German cinemas on February 1, 2024.