Green Border (2024)

Direction: Agnieszka Holland
Country: Poland / other

With shades of her mentor Andrzej Wajda in her filmmaking style, Polish director Agnieszka Holland (Europa, Europa, 1990; In Darkness, 2011), an important figure of the Polish New Wave movement, turns her gaze to immigration in a mesmerizing odyssey comprised of four parts. The narrative involves a Syrian family and an Afghan woman trying to cross the forest that separates Belarus from Poland, a border guard consumed by guilt, and a group of activists who welcome a psychologist turned staunch supporter of their humanitarian cause. 

By filming in black and white with vision and nerve, Holland accentuates the realism of a painful crisis that exposes the worst side of human nature. Green Border is a tense affair, as dark and swampy as the forest landscapes and governments involved in its narrative, providing viewers with a disturbing scenario of racial prejudice and shocking indifference. Noble-minded in its revelatory disclosures, this tough-to-take look at the plight of migrants seeking asylum in the European Union overflows with passion, artistry, and rage in a segmented, formal structure that coheres.

The ensemble cast is solid, hitting the right emotional notes and building credibility with scenes that are Holland’s earnest attempts to bring to the world a harrowing chapter of her country’s history. The contemporary topic adds to the film’s urgent appeal in a social and political rant that, refusing to let hope go, confirms Holland as an incisive and influential filmmaker. Green Border was distinguished in seven categories in Venice, including the Special Jury Prize and Best Film in a Foreign Language.

The Old Oak (2023)

Direction: Ken Loach
Country: UK

Ken Loach is an English director whose work we respected in full. His new drama, The Old Oak, is realism pushed to tears, a minor opus that deals with two topics: impoverishment in former mining towns and the arrival of Syrian refugees. How finely Loach has woven these thematic threads? 

While not packing the same punch as I, Daniel Blake (2016) or Sorry We Missed You (2019), the film intersperses lukewarm and powerful moments, evincing a softness that occasionally leans on pathos and sentimentality, diluting the impact of the narrative. Set in Durham, the story introduces Yara (Ebla Mari), a Syrian refugee with a passion for photography, who arrives in town just to be unconsoled with a broken camera and a less-than-welcoming reception. Already underwhelmed by crisis, some locals develop an unfounded xenophobia that translates into hate, lies, and betrayal. But there’s also kindness and compassion, which especially apply to TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner), the broken yet goodhearted owner of The Old Oak, the sole pub in town, in urgent need of repairs. 

Paul Laverty’s screenplay doesn’t come with major surprises, while Loach’s direction is quietly effective as if the camera wasn’t there. Although navigating predictable territory, they keep tackling social issues deeply rooted in our time and transporting them to the screen with a naturalistic Emile Zola-like approach. It’s a lucid film that, hitting where is necessary, ends up uneven. The optimistic path may touch the viewers’ hearts, but the full complexity of the subject is not there. Yara is reduced to a functional role, her words of lament feeling more superficial than deep. Our hearts go to TJ, not Yara, a consequence of the film’s vulnerabilities.

The pair Loach / Laverty, who has been working together since 1996, leaves us at the doorstep of an intercultural consolidation one can only dream of. The intentions are noble but The Old Oak doesn’t really come off despite the painful dramas behind each character.