Agnieszka Holland's 'Green Border' Gripping Polish Drama Captures Refugees' Nightmares

Agnieszka Holland's Green Border official trailer and release date — Green Border (courtesy Kino Lorber)

Kino Lorber debuted the official trailer for Green Border, the black and white filmed Polish drama set at the “green border” zone on the Belarus–European Union border, where Middle Eastern and African refugees are caught in a geopolitical crisis created by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.

Starring in the movie are Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Tomasz Włosok, Behi Djanati Atai, Mohamad Al Rashi, and Dalia Naous.

Release Date

Directed by Agnieszka Holland, Green Border premiered at Venice International Film Festival where it won the Special Jury Prize; and opens June 21 in New York, then expanding to Los Angeles on June 28.

Synopsis

In the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so called “green border” between Belarus and Poland, refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are trapped in a geopolitical crisis cynically engineered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. Pawns in this hidden war, the lives of Julia, a newly minted activist who has given up her comfortable life, Jan, a young border guard, and a Syrian family intertwine.

Reviews

The Guardian review gave the film 4 of 5 stars, wrote, “At 74, Polish film-maker Agnieszka Holland has lost none of her passion – or compassion – and this brutal, angry, gruelling drama, in sombre black and white, is recognisably the work of that director who made Europa Europa in 1990. It is about the “green border” exclusion zone between Poland and Belarus, now the location for an apparently unending ordeal for refugees.”

“The result is a somber, yet gripping movie in what feels like two separate genres: a movie about the eastern front in the second world war, or the first world war, or perhaps an entirely different, futurist film: a post-apocalyptic drama in which the forest is the site of some frantic survival-struggle experienced by people whose humanity has been almost entirely stripped from them, as if by some nuclear blast or germ warfare strike.”