Controversial refugee film causes a stir among Polish right-wing parties

The film ‘Green Border’ by Polish Director Agnieszka Holland – which was inspired by the refugee crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border – premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival and has so far been boycotted by the Polish right-wing, who consider the film to be anti-Polish.

The drama received international acclaim from film critics and won the Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

But the film received a completely different reception in Poland, where right-wing parties and organisations, including the highest representatives of power from the national radical United Right (a ruling coalition that consists of PiS), spoke harshly about the film, the filmmakers and those who saw it in the cinema.

Right-wing politicians referring to the film made no secret of the fact that, in many cases, they had not seen it.

Among others, the minister of justice and prosecutor general of Poland, the Eurosceptic Zbigniew Ziobro, spoke negatively about the film and its makers, linking the film’s production to the leader of the Polish liberal opposition, Donald Tusk.

Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, called the film a ‘defilement of the Polish uniform’, referring to the fact that the Polish Border Guard is portrayed negatively.

The Border Guards themselves also expressed a negative opinion of the film, stating, ‘only pigs go to the cinema’.

This is a slogan of the Polish Home Army from the German occupation during World War II, written on walls against people who went to cinemas to see German propaganda productions.

The use of this slogan about the viewers of ‘Green Border’ was supported by the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, saying, “I am not surprised that the Border Guard officers who saw the film used this slogan”.

Holland has been the victim of harsh words from Polish politicians and opponents of the film and is currently under round-the-clock protection.

On Filmweb, Poland’s largest online film database, ‘Green Border’, enjoys an exceptionally low rating of 2.7, despite a 7.6 rating from critics.

Political commentators believe that the Law and Justice party uses Holland’s production to cover the so-called ‘visa scandal’, in which the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs reportedly issued visas to migrants from Africa and the Middle East in exchange for money.

Since the outbreak of the refugee crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border in 2021, at least 217 people have been killed in the border forest between the two countries.

(Bartosz Sieniawski | Euractiv.pl)