Shocking Truth Revealed! Filmmaker Exposes Poland’s Migrant Crisis, Faces Unimaginable Backlash!

It’s late in the evening in Berlin, and Agnieszka Holland, a renowned Polish director, is weary from a day of filming. Despite the fatigue, she’s ready for a Zoom interview from her Hollywood-themed hotel room, unconcerned about the unexpected backdrop of a Mary Poppins cut-out.

She looks visibly worn out, understandable given the demanding production schedule of her ongoing film, “Franz,” an unconventional biopic of Franz Kafka. Yet, as she delves into the details of her latest masterpiece, “Green Border,” set to premiere in Los Angeles this Friday, her exhaustion seems to dissolve in her fervor for the project.

“Green Border,” an exceptional narrative about refugees, is both an expansion of Holland’s frequently explored themes and a refreshing innovation. Even for Holland, the film triggered a degree of antagonism in her homeland, unparalleled in her long career of audacious cinematic work. The 75-year-old filmmaker recalls, “The film led to a surge of hostility in Poland, primarily from the Polish government. I’ve never experienced such an intense hate campaign in my life. It was distressing, and I received numerous threats,” which compelled her to hire full-time security personnel.

The censure originated from Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the then-leader of Poland’s Law and Justice Party, who lambasted the movie in 2023 as “abhorrent, repugnant, and vile.” High-ranking Polish ministers denounced “Green Border” as “intellectually dishonest and morally disgraceful,” likened it to Nazi propaganda films, and compared Holland to the infamous Nazi official, Joseph Goebbels. One minister even accused Holland of renouncing her Polish identity through the film.

The government’s disapproval escalated when they denied “Green Border” an Oscar nomination for best international film. They furthermore mandated that cinemas precede the movie with a brief film promoting the official standpoint. “The government produced propaganda clips portraying Poland in a positive light,” says Holland. “Some theater owners bravely refused to screen it. One government-backed cinema agreed to display it, but only with a disclaimer that all proceeds from the screening would be donated to activist groups.”

Surprisingly, Holland believes that the aggressive threats inadvertently promoted the movie. “Although it was distressing, the fierce resentment ultimately boosted the movie’s box office performance,” says Holland, making “Green Border” one of Poland’s top earners for the year. “Furthermore, it sparked deep and meaningful conversations with the audience, who often stayed long after the screenings. Our candidness inspired many others. It was profoundly moving to witness this.”

The film that provoked such uproar, recipient of a special jury prize in Venice, is based on a bizarre, real-life occurrence that is fittingly Kafkaesque. In 2021, Aleksandr Lukashenko, the longstanding leader of Belarus, a neighboring country of Poland and an ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, unexpectedly facilitated the entry of Middle Eastern refugees into his nation. Upon their arrival, they were led directly to the border and literally forced into Poland.

However, the Poland they encountered was drastically different from what they envisioned. It was the Green Border, a densely wooded area depicted by the New York Times as a “two-mile-wide exclusion zone around the border” with a “116-mile-long, 18-foot-high barbed wire fence” heavily monitored by Polish border patrol. The guards rounded up the refugees and pushed them back into Belarus, only for them to be forced back into Poland, resulting in a perpetual cycle of violence, theft, and even death.

Holland, who has an intricate understanding of the situation, traces its roots back to the Syrian civil war in 2015. “Europe is terrified of the influx of individuals with different skin colors, religions, and cultures,” says Holland. “This fear was instantly exploited by far-right populist governments to instill an atmosphere of anxiety and threat.”

With likely support from Putin, Lukashenko chose to exacerbate the situation by opening a pathway for refugees “to destabilize Poland and Europe, to demonstrate that the European ideals of democracy and human rights are baseless,” Holland continues.

Additionally, Holland recounts, “The Polish government prohibited access to humanitarian organizations and media. This made it impossible not only to assist the refugees stranded in the forest but also to document the cruelty of the border guards.

“Kaczynski, the primary political force in Poland, made a revealing statement. ‘America lost the Vietnam War when it allowed the media to cover and broadcast images of children burnt by napalm. We will not allow such images to be released.’ This drove me to try to tell this story while it was still unfolding.”

Furthermore, Holland was determined to narrate the story from a human perspective. To achieve an authentic feel, she, along with her co-writers, Gabriela Lazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, “spent countless hours talking to different people. We finally managed to secretly converse with border guards and glean their perspectives.”

Due to the film’s controversial content, the most time-consuming aspect was fund-raising, which took an entire year and even involved contributions from an American producer, Fred Bernstein. “Green Border” eventually became a Polish-French-Czech-Belgian co-production, and Holland, serving as a producer for the first time, gained new insights into the intricacies of European film production.

The film unravels the story from the perspectives of three different groups. It first introduces a Syrian refugee family hoping to join a relative in Sweden. Then, a Polish border guard grappling with his sense of right and wrong is introduced. Finally, a therapist in a border town gradually becomes an activist. The drama intensifies with a concluding scene depicting Poland’s altered response to another wave of refugees, this time from religiously and racially similar Catholic Ukraine.

For Holland, authenticity was paramount, so she was particularly meticulous with casting. “The actors were professional actors but also actual Syrian refugees,” she clarifies. “They didn’t need to imagine the Syrians’ experiences; they understood them firsthand.” For the local activist role, Holland chose Polish actress Maja Ostaszewska, who was involved in human rights activities at the border in her personal life.

Filmed in a mere 24 days in striking black-and-white by cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk, “Green Border” is infused with a sense of urgency and immediacy. “It was a unique, collaborative effort,” Holland recalls. “On some days, we operated with two parallel units, with two young Polish women as directors. We did this covertly, without the Polish government’s knowledge, but we found unity.”

Holland, known for her Holocaust-related films like “Europa Europa,” once believed that “the horrors of the Holocaust and the shock of humanity’s capacity for such atrocities had inoculated us against nationalism. But since the September 11 attacks, that immunity has dissipated. Gradually, old patterns and old demons are resurfacing.”

This thought is reinforced by the fact that the Green Border area is near the former site of Sobibor, a World War II German death camp known for a significant prisoner uprising and escape. “The escapees from that camp looked exactly like these refugees,” she observes, “and they fled directly to that forest.”

Both the film “Green Border” and its director, Holland, are deeply concerned about the world regressing into a terrifying past. “It’s like an ailing tooth that worsens over time,” she elaborates. “If you don’t treat it early enough, you lose it. The past that was never addressed is, frankly, still with us.”