New York Film Festival: ‘Green Border’ Director Agnieszka Holland Talks Controversial Film’s “Urgency”

Tyler Coates
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The Polish film Green Border had already courted plenty of international controversy by the time the drama premiered at the New York Film Festival this week. After its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August, where it won the Special Jury Prize, the film — which depicts the horrific conditions faced by migrants attempting to cross from Belarus into Poland — has broken box office records in its home country despite a government-approved warning video before the movie downplaying its critique of the Polish government’s handling of the border crisis.

“I’ve become the biggest threat to Polish national security,” said director Agnieszka Holland during a Q&A following the film’s Thursday night screening in which the filmmaker was joined by cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk and actresses Behi Djanati-Atai and Joely Mbundu. Just before the Venice premiere, both the Polish justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro and president Andrzej Duda compared the film’s negative depiction of Polish guards to “Nazi propaganda,” and the Polish Oscar committee picked the animated film The Peasants as its official Oscar submission despite Green Border‘s acclaimed reviews.

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Holland, who has since sued Ziobro for defamation, spoke about the film’s urgency in her introduction to Green Border on Thursday. While the film began development in late 2021 (which is when Green Border takes place), financing proved to be a challenge. After a year and a half of raising funds, the film went into production in March 2023 and premiered within months at Venice. “It was my fastest delivery,” said Holland.

Naumiuk also weighed in on the production’s rapid speed, noting that because of the subject matter, he was concerned that the black-and-white film’s aesthetic might obscure the dire consequences faced by those affected by the border crisis — not just the refugees but also the Polish border guard; the activists risking their own safety to bring aid to the migrants; and the average Poles living near the border who are forced to blindly support their government or acknowledge the abuses taking place in their own backyard.

While Naumiuk noted his visual language was inspired by the few photojournalists who attempted to document the crisis — despite the Polish president’s attempts to ban the press from covering what was happening on the border — Holland herself stressed how Green Border was her own attempt to raise awareness. “I had to make my own images,” she said of her response to the government-enforced media blackout.

Speaking to the New York audience, Holland also addressed Green Border‘s international relevance. “We were avant-garde,” the director quipped, noting that Poland had voted for a populist and national government long before the United States elected Donald Trump as president. When asked what Americans should know about Poland, Holland replied, “[Our countries] are like sisters. What’s happening there is happening here.”

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