Green Border

Green Border is not an easy watch, but it is an indescribably important one, and one of Holland’s most humane and compassionate works yet.

Brutal, field-level depictions of trauma orchestrated by oppressive political structures seeking to manipulate the hearts and minds of some, while dehumanizing others renders Green Border an angry, visceral masterpiece.

The haunted faces of actors such as Jalal Altawil are hard to forget. An extended coda, in which Ukrainian refugees are warmly welcomed by the same Polish guards who tormented Syrian refugees, packs a serious punch.

It doesn't pull any punches on all sides.

“Green Border” tells an important, of-the-moment story that seeks to shake the world awake to the insanity of world refugee crisis.

“Green Border” has the directness and truth of a documentary and the emotional immediacy of a narrative feature.

It flows quite effectively between the different stories without any of them losing strength, especially the refugee plot, which is the most pertinent and painful. [Full review in Spanish]

Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border is an urgent, fiercely political film about the ongoing migrant crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border... [the] film is inherently humanist and weaves a portrait of the complexities of the problem for everyone involved.

Instead of Green Border remaining a hard-edged film in which the depredations of an unfair, destructive system are exposed, it becomes something that makes viewers feel a little bit better about the agony she brought to life in the first half...

The refugees all think they’re on the road to a new life in a peaceful country, but quickly learn that they have been tricked into playing a game few of them will be able to win