Agnieszka Holland is a prolific Polish director. In a profession spanning greater than fifty years, she has scored quite a few essential 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 Pageant 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 problem 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 in opposition to humanity.
Your movie was controversial, and you’ve got been threatened and abused. How are you right now, how do you are feeling?
It is getting higher, as a result of the ultra-conservative nationalist authorities that attacked me misplaced the election. After all, the nation has not modified utterly. The previous authorities undermined the legislation and establishments with their very own unconstitutional legal guidelines and now it is extremely exhausting to undo this. Particularly because the nation’s president nonetheless comes from this conservative get together [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 simple to translate into actuality.
Then again, though the environment has modified, there are nonetheless 30-35% of the inhabitants who help this authoritarian populism, which has the enchantment of nationalism and is commonly tinged with racism.
However the individuals who went to see the movie had been very moved and requested plenty of sincere and essential 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 dwell in a divided world, and Polish society may be very polarised, fairly like American society. Populists have this expertise for manipulating the human mind to the purpose the place individuals begin to comply with them, like a cult. You see it with Trump and his supporters. In Poland it is not 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 had been an ideal success with the viewers. I believe that by asking these questions, and by displaying the human beings who had 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 type of collective empathy.
Talking of the change of regime, it is true that migration coverage was significantly brutal within the Poland of PiS. Are you extra optimistic now?
For the second, we’re not seeing any main adjustments. They’ve fired just a few officers, together with probably the most senior border guards who had 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 vital however that they are going to be carried out humanely, which is an oxymoron.
However no less than 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 are able to have a dialogue with them, and we’ll sustain the stress. Public opinion is extra delicate than it was just a few months in the past.
Is it that violence is critical for the dehumanisation of refugees, a necessary 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 nations have embarked upon. I made three movies in regards to the Shoah, in regards to 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 correct to dwell, to be handled with dignity. You then 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 mentioned that [migrants] had been probably not individuals, that they had been at the beginning Lukashenka’s weapons, terrorists, rapists, paedophiles and zoophiles. The purpose was actually to create concern, and in addition to deprive these individuals of their voice and their particular person destinies, to point out 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 overtly about utilizing weapons in opposition to 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 displaying 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 basically a alternative between consolation and values. Should you have a look at the results of right now’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 type 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 legislation. And it is a lot the identical with migration.
In any case, we’ve got to keep away from accepting the language of the far proper and the fascists. I refuse to speak about migrants as something apart from human beings with their very own lives, their very own selections, their very own wants – the identical fundamental wants as ours. And it is our duty to share.
It was fascinating to see how simply and enthusiastically the Poles opened their houses to Ukrainian refugees. Poland has welcomed greater than one million newcomers, and nothing horrible has occurred. The nation has not turn into poorer, quite the opposite, it has some financial advantages. Persons are additionally extra beneficiant. You recognize, individuals are typically narcissistic. Once they look within the mirror – until they seem to be a bit bizarre – they prefer to see magnificence mirrored again.
Inexperienced Border is a really robust, very brutal movie. As you say, it is fairly pessimistic about what Europe is right now. However for you, what’s Europe? Is it nonetheless a stupendous venture that needs to be defended?
Completely, it is a stupendous venture, one of the stunning tasks of humanity. To let it fail can be a horrible waste. It could price plenty of human lives, not simply the lives of migrants, individuals from elsewhere, but additionally the lives of our white residents. I am fairly 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 duty of the authorities, whether or not political or spiritual, is gigantic. In the present day’s world is so difficult and filled with challenges that individuals are misplaced. Modernity is extraordinarily advanced and there are such a lot of risks. Persons are in search of somebody to inform them “we’ve got 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 fact would not change, it is nonetheless there.