Hello Reader,

Two of the year's best movies may be hitting cinemas/digital near you this week.

If you're in Canada, get your FREE ticket to the national digital screening of Agnieszka Holland's Venice Jury Prize-winning film Green Border.

This urgent, inspiring, politically charged drama is tied for my #1 film of 2024 with Bas Devos's much quieter Here. It will make you angry about the atrocities happening at the Polish-Belarus border and heartened that ordinary people like us can make a difference.

Fair warning: this film is heavy and deals with sometimes violent subject matter. It's not exploitative, but it is harrowing. You won't be sorry you've watched it, but DO NOT watch it at night before bed. Leave yourself some time to unwind with something light and fun!

About Green Border

Agnieszka Holland’s Venice Jury Prize-winning film, Green Border, is her latest film about life under a totalitarian regime — something she’s previously explored directly in films like Angry Harvest, Europa Europa, In Darkness, and Charlatan. The film chronicles the lives of people tied up in the mess happening at the Polish-Belarusian border.

A few years ago, the Belarusian president invited migrants from the Middle East and Africa seeking safe passage to Europe to use Belarus as a way to cross the Polish border into the EU illegally. Rather than helping migrants find their way to safety, this was a tactic to embarrass the EU, whom he knew full well had no interest in accepting the migrants. By declaring an “exclusion zone” near the border, Poland created a No-Man’s Land where the law of the land was blatantly ignored, and migrants were treated like lambs to the slaughter on both sides of the border — where officials used “pushback,” a euphemism for violently forcing migrants across the border.

Holland opens the story first from the perspective of a group of Middle Eastern migrants trying to cross over the Polish border, only to discover the nightmarish limbo of beatings and starvation that await them. But she soon expands it out to the story of one of the Polish border workers who has learned to turn a blind eye to the humanity of the migrants he’s been ordered to terrorize, a group of activists in Poland trying to help the migrants in the limited ways available to them, and a psychologist, Julia, who becomes invested in more radical activism when some dying migrants turn up in her backyard, and there’s nothing she can do to save them.

Shot in black and white, Green Border feels like a film that could have taken place at any time, aside from the ever-present smartphones that are so necessary to ensure the survival of the migrants. It’s a modern-day Holocaust drama about intolerance, state-sponsored violence, and the arbitrary papers and physical appearances that can land you in a seemingly inescapable hell. Although the film is mainly about the people helping and hurting at the border, our one glimpse into the life of a perpetrator reveals a working-class man trying to provide for his family who has been exploited and brainwashed by the government. Throughout, though, we’re confronted with all the people who look away from reality, including Julia at the start, as practice because dealing with it would require changing their behaviours and admitting their complicity. There are some harrowing scenes of abject violence, but what stands out are the film’s humanist moments.

How to watch Green Border

Human Rights Watch Festival Toronto is screening Green Border digitally across Canada from March 24-28 for FREE.

​Book your FREE ticket here. ​

If you're in Toronto, the film will also screen free at the HotDocs Cinema on Saturday at 3pm. Tickets are available here.​

Not in Canada? The film has distribution in most parts of the world! It will be released in the US/Canada in June-ish and the UK later this year.

Explore more Agnieszka Holland

I'm a HUGE Agnieszka Holland fan, having grown up with her masterpiece, The Secret Garden (1993). So we've covered A LOT of her work. Here's how you can keep exploring her work:

​Listen to our podcast on The Secret Garden​

​Listen to our podcast on Agnieszka's Holland's films Europa, Europa, Washington Square, and Charlatan​

​Read my interview with Holland on her film Spoor and her filmmaking process.

​Listen to our masterclass with Agnieszka Holland from 2021.​

​Read my review of Charlatan.​

More to see at the cinema this weekend

​Ivan Sen's GORGEOUS and WONDERFUL Limbo (my #3 film of the year) begins its US theatrical run this weekend at Film Forum and in LA. It will expand across the US in the coming weeks. It has a distributor in Canada, so it should hopefully be out later this year.

I liked the Holocaust-adjacent drama One Life , which stars Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Flynn. It's on VOD in the UK and in cinemas in Canada/US.

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