Agnieszka Holland is a prolific Polish director. In a profession spanning greater than fifty years, she has scored quite a few important successes, together with her movies Europa Europa (1990) and In Darkness (2011). Her work has received quite a few awards.
Her newest movie, Inexperienced Border (launched in 2023 in Poland) depicts the therapy of migrants on the Polish-Belarusian border. Inexperienced Border, which has been vilified by Poland’s far proper, received the Particular Jury Prize on the Venice Movie Competition in 2023. We met her on the premiere in Brussels.
Voxeurop: Why did you make this movie?
Agnieszka Holland: I have been following the migration state of affairs carefully since 2015. I’ve watched Europe’s confused, cowardly and inconsistent response. However when the difficulty got here knocking at my door, I felt obliged to talk out. Not least as a result of I’ve devoted a lot of my profession to telling the tales of crimes towards humanity.
Your movie was controversial, and you’ve got been threatened and abused. How are you immediately, how do you are feeling?
It is getting higher, as a result of the ultra-conservative nationalist authorities that attacked me misplaced the election. In fact, the nation has not modified fully. The previous authorities undermined the regulation and establishments with their very own unconstitutional legal guidelines and now it is vitally laborious to undo this. Particularly because the nation’s president nonetheless comes from this conservative occasion [the far-right Law and Justice party, PiS]. He cannot stand any try to alter legal guidelines. [The democratic battle] has been received, nevertheless it’s not straightforward to translate into actuality.
Alternatively, though the ambiance has modified, there are nonetheless 30-35% of the inhabitants who assist this authoritarian populism, which has the attraction of nationalism and is usually tinged with racism.
However the individuals who went to see the movie have been very moved and requested a whole lot of trustworthy and vital questions. And that is what we wished to awaken: an consciousness that we should resist a state of affairs that’s occurring not simply in Poland, however throughout Europe.
Have the assaults on you calmed down?
Sure, and this authorities has no curiosity or authority in attacking me, even when it continues to take action in small methods. However we stay in a divided world, and Polish society could be very polarised, moderately like American society. Populists have this expertise for manipulating the human mind to the purpose the place individuals begin to observe them, like a cult. You see it with Trump and his supporters. In Poland it isn’t on the identical degree in fact, and the nation is on a special scale too, however the state of affairs is comparable.
In any case we have been an excellent success with the viewers. I believe that by asking these questions, and by exhibiting the human beings who have been depicted by the propaganda as paedophile terrorists, zoophiles, and weapons of Lukashenka, we managed to open up the controversy, and in addition to awaken a sort of collective empathy.
Talking of the change of regime, it is true that migration coverage was notably brutal within the Poland of PiS. Are you extra optimistic now?
For the second, we aren’t seeing any main adjustments. They’ve fired a couple of officers, together with essentially the most senior border guards who have been the face of the brutality. However the coverage shouldn’t be altering, or not a lot. We’re placing stress on them, speaking to them, and listening to that the push-backs are obligatory however that they are going to be carried out humanely, which is an oxymoron.
However a minimum of they don’t seem to be mendacity, they don’t seem to be saying terrible issues, they don’t seem to be utilizing Nazi and racist language. We will have a dialogue with them, and we will sustain the stress. Public opinion is extra delicate than it was a couple of months in the past.
Is it that violence is important for the dehumanisation of refugees, a vital situation for the authorities to behave as they do?
Sure. To begin with, I am delicate to the state of affairs of migrants at our borders as a result of I recognise the trail that a number of international locations have embarked upon. I made three movies concerning the Shoah, concerning the years 1930-1940. I see how sure issues have began to occur once more. First, it is the choice: you resolve who has the proper to stay, to be handled with dignity. Then you definitely dehumanise them.
The Polish state propaganda was shameless. The inside minister held a press convention that turned infamous – in Poland at any price – the place he stated that [migrants] have been probably not individuals, that they have been in the beginning Lukashenka’s weapons, terrorists, rapists, paedophiles and zoophiles. The goal was actually to create concern, and in addition to deprive these individuals of their voice and their particular person destinies, to indicate them as a harmful and repulsive mass.
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So, in spite of everything this repression, after these push-backs, after the brutality, the ultimate stage is annihilation. That is what scares me. As a result of I hear the phrases of sure right-wing politicians, who speak brazenly about utilizing weapons towards refugees, each in Europe – in Italy, for instance, or within the Netherlands – and in Texas.
So what ought to we do politically?
Above all, we must always resist the state of affairs: analyse it, talk about it, search for the explanations, and in addition attempt to change individuals’s minds. Not by horrifying them, however by exhibiting them optimistic photographs of actuality. In any case, Europe is shrinking, it’s a continent that’s disappearing demographically, it’s ageing, and it wants new residents.
However I believe it is essentially a selection between consolation and values. If you happen to have a look at the results of immediately’s state of affairs, you see that the logical subsequent step is, for instance, not simply to push the boats again into the Mediterranean however to bomb them, and to create a sort of fortress the place we shoot anybody who comes shut sufficient to remove our consolation. After which that is the tip of the Europe of democracy and human rights.
However some European residents, who could also be delicate to the arguments of the far proper with out essentially being fascists or neo-Nazis, are genuinely afraid of what refugees may convey.
Sure, in fact. That is why I say that the selection is between consolation and values. As a result of we’re very privileged in Europe, and we must always share our comforts at such instances as these. It is a type of extending rights. You recognize, 300 years in the past, rights solely belonged to wealthy, heterosexual, white males. However then we accepted that kids additionally had rights, as did ladies, slaves, individuals of color, homosexuals, and so forth. We make progress, however there’s all the time a backlash from those that have a monopoly on the regulation. And it is a lot the identical with migration.
In any case, we have now to keep away from accepting the language of the far proper and the fascists. I refuse to speak about migrants as something aside from human beings with their very own lives, their very own selections, their very own wants – the identical primary wants as ours. And it is our accountability to share.
It was fascinating to see how simply and enthusiastically the Poles opened their properties to Ukrainian refugees. Poland has welcomed greater than one million newcomers, and nothing horrible has occurred. The nation has not change into poorer, quite the opposite, it has some financial advantages. Individuals are additionally extra beneficiant. You recognize, individuals are usually narcissistic. After they look within the mirror – except they are a bit bizarre – they wish to see magnificence mirrored again.
Inexperienced Border is a really robust, very brutal movie. As you say, it is moderately pessimistic about what Europe is immediately. However for you, what’s Europe? Is it nonetheless a ravishing venture that must be defended?
Completely, it is a ravishing venture, one of the crucial lovely tasks of humanity. To let it fail can be a horrible waste. It might value a whole lot of human lives, not simply the lives of migrants, individuals from elsewhere, but in addition the lives of our white residents. I am moderately pessimistic, as a result of I believe it is all the time a lot simpler to domesticate evil than to domesticate good.
Right here, the accountability of the authorities, whether or not political or spiritual, is big. In the present day’s world is so difficult and stuffed with challenges that persons are misplaced. Modernity is extraordinarily advanced and there are such a lot of risks. Individuals are on the lookout for somebody to inform them “we have now quite simple solutions to your advanced questions, we all know what to do”. And these populists win as a result of they supply precisely that reply. However even for those who give it a special identify, the truth would not change, it is nonetheless there.
