Feature film: »Green Border«: Trapped in the death zone

From the plane you can see an almost endless green area. These are the forests between Belarus and Poland. The EU’s external border runs right through the middle and is increasingly becoming the new Iron Curtain between Eastern and Western Europe.

On board the plane they are all still passengers, paying guests who have this or that wish. There is the family from Syria with the grandfather and the children who want to travel on to their relative in Sweden. In Syria they have lost their livelihood due to the war. And there is also an older English teacher from Afghanistan who doesn’t want to wait until the Taliban find her. People talk about the future and how good it is that there is a route to the EU via Belarus; they never took the route across the Mediterranean, it was far too dangerous, especially with children.

When the plane lands in Minsk, each passenger receives a rose from the stewardesses: “Welcome to Belarus!” For them, this is the last friendly greeting for a long time – and for some of them forever. As announced, the van ordered by the relative is waiting at the airport. Does it go all the way to Sweden? No, only as far as the Polish border, they find out. But after that we go straight on to Sweden. So they immerse themselves in the green of the huge forest area, the road ends, unpaved paths begin – and suddenly the driver wants another three hundred euros. But everything was already paid for in advance! A sneering laugh is the answer.

Suddenly they have a barbed wire fence in front of them, they are expected – and now they are being pushed along roughly. Quickly through and then on through the Polish restricted area, so they say. If they had that behind them, they would also come to Sweden. They crawl through a gap in the fence, the first few suitcases remain behind. Cell phones are important, but their batteries drain quickly. Actually, Google Maps shows you Poland – so this is already the EU! They think they’ve made it.

With “Green Border” Agnieszka Holland tells a claustrophobic story. She takes two and a half hours to do this, in places showing what happens at this green border to people who want to flee to the EU, as if in real time. They were told that it was easy to enter the EU illegally and apply for asylum through Belarus. But that’s not true, the Poles are supposed to secure Fortress Europe to the east – and the conservative Polish government, which still existed in 2023 at the time of filming, is particularly zealous in doing so. The principle of deterrence is practiced.

And we accompany the Syrian family and the Afghan English teacher, whose brother worked for the Polish army, on their odyssey through the forest. Everyone quickly senses that things aren’t moving forward – this is a kind of death zone, like the one Andrej Tarkovsky showed in “Stalker.” The fear is growing. Strange things happen, people disappear into the swamp without a trace. But unlike Tarkovsky, there is no mysterious force at play here, but rather ruthless power politics that enforces its interests using (almost) all means. We see border guards throwing bodies over the barbed wire fence. Some throw them down, others throw them back again.

After hours of wandering around, the Syrian family and the Afghan woman are finally picked up by the Polish border guards. But instead of taking down their personal details for the asylum application, they immediately drive them back to the border – and drive them through the raised barbed wire back to Belarus. This illegal practice is called “push-backs”. On the other side, the border guards from Belarus are already waiting and it doesn’t take long before they are brought back to Poland. One man says he has been pushed back and forth eight times. A border guard from Belarus, asked for water for the children, demanded fifty euros for a water bottle, and when a woman said that was too much, he poured the water out in front of her.

Very soon everything will be missing. The injuries caused by the barbed wire begin to inflame during the long night marches through the forest. There are no more dry clothes to change into, those trapped in the forest like this are getting sick, first of all the old people and the children. Does no one help them? Yes, there are Polish helpers who bring them water and clothing and also disinfect their wounds. But they are not allowed to lead them out of the forest; that would be a criminal offense. A schizophrenic situation that damages everyone involved. The helpers wait at the edge of the exclusion zone and then drive away in their cars, frustrated that they couldn’t do more.

The director doesn’t judge what’s happening at the border, she doesn’t accuse anyone, she just shows what this situation does to everyone who is involved in it. This gives the film the hermeticism of the images that makes it strong. Without comment, we see a commander of the Polish army give a motivational speech to the border guards, saying that they should not show any weaknesses and that it is everyone’s own fault who puts their children in such a dangerous escape situation. These are “not people, but human missiles” that Lukashenko is shooting down to destabilize Poland and the entire EU. After all, among those asking for asylum here are terrorists who then carried out attacks in Warsaw or Berlin.

But some of the Polish border guards can’t bear to shield themselves from any sympathy. There is a young man whose wife is currently expecting a child and who is increasingly doubting whether it is right to treat people in need the way they do. There is also Julia (Maja Ostaszewska), a psychologist who strictly ensures that her patients adhere to norms. But when she meets the Polish activists, she doesn’t understand why they are so hesitant in their actions. She decides to do more and drives her car into the forest, especially wanting to get the sick out – but inevitably ends up in the grind of law enforcement herself.

It is a depressing film that provides an inside view of the West’s prevailing impotence. You don’t know how to deal with those affected by crises and catastrophes that you helped to cause. This by no means only affects Poland – after all, it wasn’t that long ago that scenes like the one on the green border between Belarus and Poland on the Oder, which was still the EU’s border river at the time, took place.

“Green Border,” this disturbingly visually powerful film, caused a lot of excitement in Poland last year. President Duda and other leading PiS politicians spoke of a film in the style of “Nazi propaganda”. Donald Tusk, leader of the opposition at the time, pointed out that those who protested loudest against the film had not even seen it. A principle of politics in dealing with the provocations of art that older people still remember well.

»Green Border«, Polen/Tschechien/Frankreich 2023. Regie Agnieszka Holland. Myth: Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Tomasz Włosok, Behi Djanati Atai. 147 Min.