In the not-too-distant past, films were powerful and important works of art that could change public opinion and, occasionally, government policy. Perhaps the most recent example is Oliver Stone’s JFK, a film I despised for championing one of the more ludicrous assassination theories, leading to the passage of the JFK Records Act of 1992. Of course, that law has since been ignored or undercut by presidents of both political parties — but that’s another story.
Thirty years ago, it was possible to imagine director Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border having such an impact. Today, like Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, it may temporarily prick the Hollywood conscience before becoming just another entertainment choice offered for a few months by your favorite streaming service.
Green Border begins aboard a Turkish airliner carrying a Syrian family from their war-torn homeland to Sweden, where a waiting relative has made arrangements for their safe passage. Flying to Belarus, the family — husband, wife, grandpa, two children and a baby — will cross the border into Poland and the European Union, where they anticipate receiving the full protections of the 1951 Geneva Convention — fruits of the post-war ‘rules-based international order’ we hear so much about these days.
Once on the ground in Minsk, their plans immediately go awry: Bribes are still needed to get to the border, and crossing it is far from simple. It immediately becomes apparent that Poland (and, by extension, the EU) is uninterested in their plight and unswayed by their legal status as refugees. As the family is shuttled back and forth across the barbed-wire fence separating ‘Western Europe’ from Belarus, they’re subjected to cruel and abusive treatment by guards on both sides. Indeed, the mistreatment is systemic: A Polish officer proclaims that refugees “aren’t people; they are weapons of Putin and Lukashenko,” bullets aimed at the heart of white Europe.
A group of supportive Poles tries to help by providing food, water and legal support; however, even filling out asylum applications is no guarantee of anything more than a long wait in a refugee camp that will likely end in denial and repatriation. Some Poles are willing to go beyond the law to assist the refugees; others less so: There’s a huge risk of crossing legal lines and endangering their relief efforts.
The film ends in February 2022, as hundreds of thousands — millions? — of Ukrainian refugees are welcomed and waved across the now wide-open Polish border. Green Border’s blunt message may be screamingly obvious, but it bears repeating: Those of us who live in the ‘civilized’ West value some lives more highly than we do others.
Roundly condemned by the Polish government (who only permitted the film to be screened if a government ‘prebuttal’ was also shown), Green Border was also denied an Oscar nomination because Poland’s nominating committee likely feared budgetary retribution from the government arts council. It’s Holland’s best film since 1990’s Oscar-nominated Europa Europa and comes with my highest recommendation.
Green Border opens Friday at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater.
