Green Border is at once arresting, epic and yet strangely empty. The experience of watching it is visceral: a collection of Syrians and Afghanis are seeking to enter fortress Europe via the Belarus-Poland border, a great wooded area which offers no shelter and is soon revealed to be a trap, as the Polish and Belarus border guards take turns in forcing the immigrants back and forth across the border. They find themselves stuck in a terrible limbo, which is only alleviated by the kind actions of a bunch of activists who head into the forest and offer medical and legal assistance, in so far as they can. The film switches focus at this point, remaining with the Polish activists, as well as recounting the story of a border guard who discovers his humanity. However, this switch seems to dislocate the movie to an extent. The perils faced by the Polish activists, whilst extreme in their own way, cannot compare to what the refugees have had to face and are facing. The activists’ stories feel like a lighter touch, steering us away from the crueller realities the first half of the film has engaged with. Green Border becomes more palatable, it moves away from the obscene. The refugee characters are left half-drawn, or dead. We do not have to suffer with them anymore and we are grateful to the filmmakers for this, but at the same time, it feels as though we have been let off the hook. In many ways Green Border captures the complexities and paradoxes of seeking to make political work within the cinema market place. The demarcated limits of how much empathy is permitted are clearly on display. For all the Europeans’ noble intentions, they almost inevitably sell their own stories, and that of their supposed subjects, short. Meanwhile, those on the wrong side of the fence have to fight for funding from wealthier nations, funding which comes with its own marketplace imperatives as to what will be palatable to the wider target audience the film is supposed to reach.
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