Stit will be difficult for the jury of Venice Film Festival 80 ignore Green Border (The green border) Of Agnieszka Holland. Adding up everything that has passed in the Competition up to today, the film by the Polish director on the massacres of immigrants/refugees deserves the Golden Lion. Or at least an important prize. It will be said: why is it dealing with an important theme? Also, but above all for how he treats it. History, divided into chapters and filmed in black and whitemercilessly describes the plight of refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union across the border between Belarus and Poland.
But the thin line of land between woods and swamps is actually the theater of struggle between the Belarusian dictator Lukashenkowhich promises easy crossing into the EU, and the racist Polish government, which pushes them back. As indeed do the Belarusians. And sometimes these back and forth are now corpses.
To understand what the situation means, Agnieszka focuses on a Syrian family with a relative waiting for them in Sweden, a border guard with some doubts about the legitimacy of his work, a group of activists and Julia, a psychologist who decides to “do something”. Dry and anti-rhetorical, Green border touches every point of the question. Fraud and violence against the poor, Polish propaganda on migrants as human weapons sent by the enemy, the media excluded from the safety zone, courage, terror, repentance. And it does so without ever being obscene, fake or blackmailing. And so well that the shame of being spectators – inside and outside the theater – is almost unbearable.
At the Venice Film FestivalAgnieszka Holland, a director who has always been attentive to human life, to joy in the midst of tragedies and disasters, to the outcasts and the excluded and to the illusions of ideologies, was present twice more: in 1992, with Oliver Oliverand in 2002, with Just walking home.
“Green Border” by Agnieszka Holland. (The Biennial)
Agnieszka Holland: «Green Border has an epic approach
On our continent, on its waves of nationalism and control, Holland had already intervened with Europe Europe, in 1990. Now, 30 years later, here is this new film about a Europe soul divided in two. «One of the reasons why you see this film today – explained the director at the press conference – is, precisely, because in the past I covered the holocaust and the second world warof famine and death. And I always had the feeling that nationalism and totalitarianism had just fallen asleep. That violence would return. When I turned Europe Europethe Berlin Wall had fallen and one had the idea that history as a perpetration of evil was over».
«Today, however, our future is very much the same as that of the uglier past. That is to say to that Europe which – unlike the one all in favor of rights and well-being – has created death and destruction. Green Border talks about a specific situation on the Belarusian-Polish border, and politicians’ responses to the migrant crisis, and consequently of all the people involved, police and citizens. The approach is epic because I wanted to describe the situation from every side, giving justice to every voice».
Agnieszka Holland with the two actors who in “Green border” play the children of the Syrian family. (Getty Images)
«Cinema must go back to dealing with real problems»
Also director of TV series (eg House of cards), Agnieszka is now convinced they have had their day. “If you look at European cinema, fictional cinema, it has long been completely incapable of getting to the bottom of reality. His place has been taken by the TV series, which are now giving way a bit. It is therefore time for cinema to regain its centralitynow that we are in the midst of war in Ukraine, that we have an ongoing humanitarian and climate crisis, and that fascist politicians are, or are, already in office.”
At this point: however, there is hope in a different Europe, far from the directives of these new politicians? «I believe that Europe is prey to the fear of losing our well-being, and that politicians use this fear to gain even more power. So citizens will give them even more control. For example, the Polish media and the population will not be too indignant when the government set up the impenetrable security zone around the border. I sincerely believe that Europe will become a kind of well-defended fort, also because of the climate crisis”.
The film was the result of a long search, and a long and difficult, painful shoot. Maja Ostaszewskaa very good actress who plays Julia, bearing a striking resemblance to Jane Alexander, said that on the set, in the woods near the border, the crew often encountered people in need of help. And that fiction so equal to reality has indelibly engraved on her: “We need to act seriously”.
At the close of the conference, Agnieszka read a statement issued by humanitarian organizations working in Poland, the gist is the following: «It must be remembered that what Green border describes continues to happen. People continue to hide in the forests, to be stripped of their rights and dignity, and to lose their lives. And not because Europe can’t help them, because it doesn’t want to».
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