Green Border (2023) on Netflix
A Syrian family and an Afghan woman reach the Belarusian border aiming for Poland and a relative in Sweden. A young guard and an activist meet the crisis from opposite sides.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb6.4/107,916 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
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Plot summary
In 2021, Bashir and Amina, with their three children and Bashir's grandfather Mohamed, land in Minsk and head for the green border, planning to cross Poland and Germany to reach relatives in Sweden. Leila, an Afghan refugee who speaks English, travels with the family. At the Polish line the family is pulled from a van and pushed into the forest on foot; the patrol is under orders to send every migrant back to Belarus, and in one clash guards force a pregnant refugee across the barbed wire. Jan, a young guard expecting a child, works those patrols; his wife questions the job. Julia, a widowed therapist who lives near the border, hears cries from the woods.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Green Border (2023)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Poland's Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro wrote on X that "In the Third Reich, the Germans produced propaganda films showing Poles as bandits and murderers. Today they have Agnieszka Holland for that." Holland announced she would sue him, and he refused to back down.
- Poland's government ordered independent "studio cinemas" that wanted to screen Green Border to show a video presenting the government's view of the border crisis first; the council-run Kino Oaza in Otwock then dropped the film from its schedule.
- Holland and co-writers Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko researched the border crisis "very deeply", including hundreds of hours of document analysis and interviews with refugees, borderland residents, activists, experts and anonymous Polish Border Guard officers; financial pressures delayed filming by a year.
- Holland shot Green Border in twenty-four days between April and May 2023 with three units; many crew members worked for "low or no salaries".
- A union of the Polish Border Guard's Nadwiśle division titled its press release "Green Border – Only pigs go to the cinema", calling the film "a scandalous, anti-Polish film" that glorifies illegal immigration and slanders Poles as "soulless guard dogs of an oppressive regime".
- In the weeks before the film's release, pro-government and nationalist individuals organised a review-bombing campaign on Filmweb, where 78 ratings averaged just 2.0 out of a possible 10.
- Poland's Oscar committee chose The Peasants over Green Border by four votes to two for the 96th Academy Awards; Holland said committee members told her they feared government reprisals if they picked her film.
- Holland claimed that "[e]verything that happens in the film is documented; nothing is invented", but added that she and the filmmakers "did some construction" and that the film's characters are "inspired by real people but composed".
