In times of war, and times of refugees risking their lives for lives to call their own, the distance between life and death can be measured in the length of a human hand, reaching out.
“Green Border,” the excellent new film from Polish-born director Agnieszka Holland, dramatizes one such refugee crisis. We have yet to see a feature of comparable force that deals with America’s own ongoing humanitarian tragedy. Chicago’s piece of this tragedy is well known by anyone who did a little or a lot to help migrants shipped north by the governor of Texas.
The great and sobering impact of what Holland, now 75, has accomplished here is in the clarity and specificity of the storytelling — even with a handful of moral “gotcha!” moments “Green Border” could do without. Much of the film plays out along a thin razor-wire line in a forest separating Belarus from Poland. What happens there is happening elsewhere, today. Holland’s film continues through July 11 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and will screen at the University of Chicago’s Doc Films July 10 and July 13 as part of its series “Agnieszka Holland’s Poland.”
We’re first introduced to a Syrian family fleeing ISIS, heading to safety thanks to an invitation from a relative living in Sweden. On board a flight to Belarus, parents, a grandparent and two children hope to travel to Poland, then Sweden.
In the first 15 minutes of “Green Border,” their hopes darken almost unimaginably. The family, led by wary Bashir (Jalal Altawil) and joined by the Afghan refugee Leila (Behi Djanati Ataï), is dumped first at a Belarus border patrol station, along with a few dozen other refugees seeking asylum. Then they’re literally shoved through a gap in the razor-wire fencing by the guards to content with the Polish border patrol, whose orders are to send them back to Belarus. This is Oct. 2021; the film concludes with a 2022 epilogue set at the border of Poland and Ukraine, for what some will read as a relatively heartening ending. It is, however, clouded by undeniable racism; a year earlier, desperate people who didn’t look like people from Ukraine got an infinitely crueler reception.
Holland wrote “Green Border” with Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko, and her directorial collaborators were Kamila Tarabura and Katarzyna Warzecha. The film’s segmented into fourths; first we meet the Syrian family, then a young, not entirely hardened Polish border guard (Tomasz Włosok), who’s about to become a father and whose experiences along the razor-wire line between humanity and inhumanity make him a long shot for redemption. The third section of “Green Border” centers on a Polish therapist (Maja Ostaszewska, a marvel) who lost her husband to COVID in the pandemic’s first year. Through her eyes we watch her own, dramatically persuasive transition from tacit sympathy for the refugee plight to active, dangerous participation with activists (including her wild hare of a sister) in saving some of these discards from certain death.
There’s so much that could go wrong with an outraged, conscience-driven drama based on contemporary horrors. Virtually none occur here. The plot strands intertwine, but not in self-consciously clever or tricky ways. Nobody would describe “Green Border” as an easy watch, but the anguish and cumulative, realistically and miserably casual violence rarely feels amped-up. This is ground-level mastery of the docudrama form, with Holland’s cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk shooting in shadowy, expressive black and white. Some of the images feel indelible already: the Syrian mother squeezing droplets of water off pine needles for her daughter to drink, for example.
More than a generation ago, in Holland’s superb World War II-set “Europa Europa” (1990), key information and some eerily revealing/concealing shots of awful, truthful things were photographed through glass, with characters peering at what cannot quite be believed. This happens selectively in “Green Border” as well. It’s how the world experiences so much tragedy, near or far: From a distance but not really, through a car window or cellphone screen.
“I can’t watch things like that,” says a friend of the psychiatrist so beautifully finessed by Ostaszewska. What she can’t watch is what we’ve already seen in “Green Border”: Polish guards assaulting refugees, caught on video. Holland’s movie itself may sound like one of those can’t-stomach-it-sorry movies outside your personal zone of tolerance. I can only counter that with my admiration for the filmmaking, the storytelling, the humane tact and Holland’s fierce honesty, unaccompanied (mostly) by blunt force. Very few things are harder in film to get right than the very recent past. Holland’s film succeeds, and not only because this recent history is not past. It’s prologue.
“Green Border” — 4 stars (out of 4)
No MPA rating (violence, language, brief nudity)
Running time: 2:32
How to watch: Through July 11 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.; also July 10 and July 13 at Doc Films, University of Chicago, 1212 E. 59th St.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
