After the media was denied access to migrants desperately trying to cross the Polish-Belarus border, director Agnieszka Holland decided to step in and make a wrenching movie about their plight. "I believe that migrant crisis, the refugee crisis, which started on the high level in 2014, is a crisis and challenge which will shape the future of Europe," Holland said.
Polish director Agnieszka Holland and members of the "Green Border" production team attended the world premiere of their latest film on the Venice Lido on Tuesday (September 5).
"Green Border" tells the story of refugees, charity workers, activists and border guards, whose lives intersect in the cold, swampy forests between the two east European countries.
Migrants started flocking to the border in 2021, after Belarus, a close Russian ally, opened travel agencies in the Middle East offering a new unofficial route into Europe - a move the European Union said was designed to create a crisis.
Poland refused to let them cross, leaving hundreds stranded in a freezing no-man's land, and temporarily imposed an exclusion zone, forbidding reporters and human rights groups from approaching the area to see what was going on.
"It was impossible for the documentary makers and the journalists to go there, but we can re-create and do something that I know how to do, make a fictional film about events which are going on right now," Holland said.
"We had to try to capture it in all (its) possible complexity and give justice and a voice to those who have been silenced and are voiceless," she added.
Her black-and-white film shows a family from Syria and a woman from Afghanistan thrown back and forward across the border by brutal guards indifferent to their suffering, as activists struggle to try to bring them to safety.
Holland, who during a decades-long career has made films about the Nazi Holocaust and Communist tyranny, said the pushback called into doubt the European Union's core values.
"If we go further on this road ... the European Union, Europe, the continent of freedom, democracy (and) human rights will disappear. It will change into some kind of a fortress," she said.
"Green Border" is highly critical of Poland's rejection of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, contrasting it to the way the country welcomed in more than a million refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022.
But the lead actress, Maja Ostaszewska, who herself went to the forests in 2021 to help the migrants, said the film was not making a political statement.
"In my opinion it's a very humane movie, not black and white answer. Just asking us, and let me say an eternal question: 'What would you do if someone, someone in need, knocked to your doors?' Because, of course, you can open and it's always your choice, in my opinion, it's always your choice," she said.
"Green Border" is one of 23 movies competing for the Golden Lion award at the Venice festival, which runs until September 9.
Agnieszka Holland also read out a statement from Grupa Granica.
"Since 2014, 60,000 people have died attempting to reach Europe. This number includes those who cross the Mediterranean Sea to land here, in Italy. Please honour them with a minute of silence."
Grupa Granica is a Polish social movement that opposes the way the authorities have responded to the events on the Polish-Belarusian border.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, Reuters
Źródło zdjęcia głównego: Agata Kubis/Kino Świat