"Helping is not illegal." Kino Lorber has revealed an official US trailer for an urgent, acclaimed Polish film titled Green Border, the latest from the masterful Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland. This premiered at last year's 2023 Venice Film Festival in the fall, where it won a Special Jury Prize at the end. Thirty years after Europa Europa, three-time Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland brings a masterful eye for realism and deep compassion to this blistering critique of a humanitarian calamity that continues to unfold. The B&w film follows family of refugees from Syria, an English teacher from Afghanistan, and a border guard, who all meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis in Belarus. Green Border is a poignant and essential work of cinema that opens our eyes and speaks to the heart, challenging viewers to reflect on the moral choices that fall to ordinary people every day. Yes it's harrowing and unforgettable.
- 5/7/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
"What Jew goes to Poland as a tourist?" Bleecker Street has unveiled their official trailer for a film titled Treasure, based on a true story and adapted from the novel of the same written by Lily Brett. This initially premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival a few months ago (here's our review), and will also play at the Tribeca Film Festival soon. It's now set for a theatrical US release in June coming soon this summer. Set in the 1990s, an American journalist named Ruth travels to Poland with her father Edek to visit his childhood places and the home where he grew up. But Edek, who's a Holocaust survivor, resists reliving his trauma & sabotages the trip creating unintentionally funny situations & taking her to strange places, befriending a taxi driver. Starring Lena Dunham as Ruth & Stephen Fry as Edek, along with Zbigniew Zamachowski, Tomasz Wlosok, Wenanty Nosul, Iwona Bielska, and Maria Mamona.
- 5/7/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
The medium is the message in Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, a piece of political cinema so freshly ripped from the headlines that you can still feel the jagged edges. Holland shot the film, which chronicles the wide ripple effects of a 2021 surge of asylum seekers along the Polish-Belarusian border, in just 23 days in March of this year and had it ready for fall festivals mere months later. In the end, her sense of propulsive, incandescent outrage is both the project’s reason for existence and its strongest attribute.
Holland, directing in collaboration with Kamila Tarabura and Katarzyna Warzecha, resists the impulse for urgency to trump all aesthetic considerations. Green Border moves beyond documentary-style realism as a shorthand for authenticity, and it’s at its most gut-wrenching when Tomek Naumiuk’s agile camerawork captures bodies in frequent, frightening motion, as well as the illusory sense of security that those bodies feel in moments of rest.
Holland, directing in collaboration with Kamila Tarabura and Katarzyna Warzecha, resists the impulse for urgency to trump all aesthetic considerations. Green Border moves beyond documentary-style realism as a shorthand for authenticity, and it’s at its most gut-wrenching when Tomek Naumiuk’s agile camerawork captures bodies in frequent, frightening motion, as well as the illusory sense of security that those bodies feel in moments of rest.
- 10/9/2023
- by Marshall Shaffer
- Slant Magazine
It’s a strange time for Agnieszka Holland. Green Border, the new film from the acclaimed Polish director — a three-time Oscar nominee — just celebrated the best opening for a Polish movie in cinemas this year with 137,000 admissions over its first weekend, according to local distributor Kino Świat. It’s particularly impressive given that the film, a black-and-white drama depicting the real-life plight of refugees stranded on the natural border between Poland and Belarus, can be a rough watch.
In late 2021, thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Africa were lured to the Polish border by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who cynically engineered a geopolitical crisis, promising migrants easy passage over the Polish border into the European Union. But the Polish government refused to let them in, leaving families stranded and starving in the swampy, treacherous forests between the two countries. Holland’s film intertwines the perspectives of the stranded refugees,...
In late 2021, thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Africa were lured to the Polish border by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who cynically engineered a geopolitical crisis, promising migrants easy passage over the Polish border into the European Union. But the Polish government refused to let them in, leaving families stranded and starving in the swampy, treacherous forests between the two countries. Holland’s film intertwines the perspectives of the stranded refugees,...
- 9/26/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Three-time Oscar-nominated Polish director Agnieszka Holland is going ahead with her defamation suit against Poland’s justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro after Ziobro refused to apologize for public comments in which he compared Holland’s new film, the refugee drama Green Border, to “Nazi propaganda.”
A court in Warsaw has upheld Holland’s right to pursue the case, in which she is demanding an apology for the comments and calling on Ziobro to make a charitable donation of 50,000 Polish zlotys ($11,600) to an association that helps Holocaust survivors.
Ziobro, a leading member of Poland’s right-wing conservative government, made the comments on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, on Monday, Sept. 4, ahead of Green Border‘s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Green Border is a dramatization of the real-life plight of refugees caught on the natural border between Belarus and Poland. The refugees were lured there by propaganda from Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko,...
A court in Warsaw has upheld Holland’s right to pursue the case, in which she is demanding an apology for the comments and calling on Ziobro to make a charitable donation of 50,000 Polish zlotys ($11,600) to an association that helps Holocaust survivors.
Ziobro, a leading member of Poland’s right-wing conservative government, made the comments on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, on Monday, Sept. 4, ahead of Green Border‘s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Green Border is a dramatization of the real-life plight of refugees caught on the natural border between Belarus and Poland. The refugees were lured there by propaganda from Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko,...
- 9/26/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
If cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland’s new film is one precision-tooled specimen.
This profoundly moving, flawlessly executed multi-strand drama, shot in stark black and white, tracks refugees from various nations in 2021 trying to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. With inevitably tragic consequences, they become pawns in a gruesome game of “pass the parcel” between guards on both sides of the title’s green border, the dividing line between European Union member Poland and Russia ally Belarus.
Although the violence shown isn’t gratuitous, the suffering in Green Border (Zielona granica) is painfully palpable. There is a moment where a Pole, a minor character in the story, refuses to look at a video on a friend’s phone showing a border guard beating a migrant; Holland’s film implicitly confronts everyone — and that would be most of us — who...
This profoundly moving, flawlessly executed multi-strand drama, shot in stark black and white, tracks refugees from various nations in 2021 trying to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. With inevitably tragic consequences, they become pawns in a gruesome game of “pass the parcel” between guards on both sides of the title’s green border, the dividing line between European Union member Poland and Russia ally Belarus.
Although the violence shown isn’t gratuitous, the suffering in Green Border (Zielona granica) is painfully palpable. There is a moment where a Pole, a minor character in the story, refuses to look at a video on a friend’s phone showing a border guard beating a migrant; Holland’s film implicitly confronts everyone — and that would be most of us — who...
- 9/6/2023
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
While you’re still in the vice-like grip of its multilevel narrative it may not feel like it, but a film like Agnieszka Holland’s bruisingly powerful new refugee drama ultimately comes from a place of optimism. It is optimistic to expect and to nurture a reaction of potentially motivating outrage, when you portray the brutality of which human individuals, at the behest of human institutions, are capable. It is optimistic to believe that, faced with extraordinary cruelty, a viewer’s ordinary decency will be compelled to rise and rebel. “Green Border” is a heart-in-mouth thriller set on the Polish-Belarusian border that wraps its social critique in the razor wire of punchy, intelligent cinematic craft in order to elicit precisely such emotions. If we can feel the horror, perhaps there is hope.
It is 2021 and a Syrian family are fleeing Isis and their ravaged hometown of Harasta on an airplane bound for Belarus.
It is 2021 and a Syrian family are fleeing Isis and their ravaged hometown of Harasta on an airplane bound for Belarus.
- 9/5/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
If you’ve seen “Europa Europa”, the real-life story of a Jewish boy who escapes a Nazi concentration camp and joins the German army, you’ll know that the Polish director Agnieszka Holland knows how to make films about people wriggling their way through life. Her latest film, which is in competition at Venice, tells several interlinked stories in and around the swampy forest border region between Poland and Belarus. We meet border guards, activists, and refugees themselves. Despite biting off a bit more than it can chew, it’s an affecting introduction to a little-known crisis and the latest case of a master filmmaker showing us they can still do it.
Six weeks out of a national election in which Poland’s hard-right government is expected to extend its grip on power, “Green Border” also has a moral urgency beyond its representation of refugees’ hardship, who are described by...
Six weeks out of a national election in which Poland’s hard-right government is expected to extend its grip on power, “Green Border” also has a moral urgency beyond its representation of refugees’ hardship, who are described by...
- 9/5/2023
- by Adam Solomons
- Indiewire
As if to come to the aid of her national cinema after the debacle that was Roman Polanski’s The Palace, Poland’s Agnieszka Holland, soon to turn 75, restores some of her homeland’s cultural dignity with a devastating exposé that angrily, and quite brilliantly, questions its humanity and political integrity. At 144 minutes, and in black and white, it is not exactly a Trojan horse, and its moral rigor does not come with a spoonful of sugar. But Green Border earns every second of that running time, and with a focus and energy that belies its director’s age. Awards-wise, this may prove to be the international feature to beat.
It begins in October 2021 with Chapter 1: The Family, in which a Syrian couple, Bashir and Amina, their three children and their grandfather are traveling on a plane from Turkey to Belarus. Their mood is upbeat; they are planning to go from Belarus to Poland,...
It begins in October 2021 with Chapter 1: The Family, in which a Syrian couple, Bashir and Amina, their three children and their grandfather are traveling on a plane from Turkey to Belarus. Their mood is upbeat; they are planning to go from Belarus to Poland,...
- 9/5/2023
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique has closed multiple territory deals on Agnieszka Holland’s “The Green Border,” which just completed principal photography in Poland.
The film has been sold to Condor (France), September Films (Benelux), Movies Inspired (Italy), Leopardo Filmes (Portugal), McF Megacom (former Yugoslavia), Kino Swiat (Poland) and Aqs (Czech Rep./Slovakia).
“The Green Border” tells the story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko, who opened the country’s doors to migrants as a back door to enter the EU.
The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.
A co-production between Poland,...
The film has been sold to Condor (France), September Films (Benelux), Movies Inspired (Italy), Leopardo Filmes (Portugal), McF Megacom (former Yugoslavia), Kino Swiat (Poland) and Aqs (Czech Rep./Slovakia).
“The Green Border” tells the story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko, who opened the country’s doors to migrants as a back door to enter the EU.
The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.
A co-production between Poland,...
- 5/18/2023
- by Leo Barraclough and Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Rolling off a successful collaboration on “Charlatan,” Films Boutique has boarded Agnieszka Holland’s next film “The Green Border,” which just completed principal photography in Poland.
Now in post production, “The Green Border” tells the fateful story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by President Lukaschenko opening doors to migrants in Belarus as a back door to enter the EU.
The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.
A co-production between Poland, France, Belgium and the Czech Republic, “The Green Border” is produced by Marcin Wierzchosławski (Metro Films), Fred Bernstein (Astute Films) and Holland. Co-producers are Maria Blicharska,...
Now in post production, “The Green Border” tells the fateful story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by President Lukaschenko opening doors to migrants in Belarus as a back door to enter the EU.
The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.
A co-production between Poland, France, Belgium and the Czech Republic, “The Green Border” is produced by Marcin Wierzchosławski (Metro Films), Fred Bernstein (Astute Films) and Holland. Co-producers are Maria Blicharska,...
- 5/10/2023
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
SkyShowtime has set its first Polish original, a fictional drama series that follows the tragicomic adventures of a 40-year old playboy.
In Warszawianka, Franek Czułkowski aka Czuly, played by Borys Szyc, is a talented writer who has experienced success and failure and now finds himself trapped between his personal struggles and societal expectations. The show follows his adventures as he struggles to grasp the meaning of his own existence in the modern world.
Helmed by Jacek Borcuch and written by Jakub Żulczyk, Warszawianka is the first Polish-language series for Comcast/Paramount Jv SkyShowtime, the new streamer which is available in numerous European territories in which Comcast’s Peacock or Paramount+ aren’t available.
Piotr Uznański serves as Director of Photography on Warszawianka. Additional cast includes Krystyna Janda, Jerzy Skolimowski, Ilona Ostrowska, Piotr Polak, Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak, Zofia Wichłacz, Paulina Gałązka, Jan Peszek, Marta Ścisłowicz, Marianna Zydek, Jakub Wieczorek, Tomasz Włosok, Maja Pankiewicz and Milena Goździela.
In Warszawianka, Franek Czułkowski aka Czuly, played by Borys Szyc, is a talented writer who has experienced success and failure and now finds himself trapped between his personal struggles and societal expectations. The show follows his adventures as he struggles to grasp the meaning of his own existence in the modern world.
Helmed by Jacek Borcuch and written by Jakub Żulczyk, Warszawianka is the first Polish-language series for Comcast/Paramount Jv SkyShowtime, the new streamer which is available in numerous European territories in which Comcast’s Peacock or Paramount+ aren’t available.
Piotr Uznański serves as Director of Photography on Warszawianka. Additional cast includes Krystyna Janda, Jerzy Skolimowski, Ilona Ostrowska, Piotr Polak, Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak, Zofia Wichłacz, Paulina Gałązka, Jan Peszek, Marta Ścisłowicz, Marianna Zydek, Jakub Wieczorek, Tomasz Włosok, Maja Pankiewicz and Milena Goździela.
- 4/26/2023
- by Max Goldbart
- Deadline Film + TV
On the JoBlo Movies YouTube channel, we will be posting one full movie every day of the week, giving viewers the chance to watch them entirely free of charge. Every movie we shared in the month of October was in the horror genre, but now that Halloween season has passed we’re drifting into another genre with today’s Free Movie of the Day. Today’s selection is the Polish action movie Diablo: The Ultimate Race, and you can watch it over on the YouTube channel linked above, or you can just watch it in the embed at the top of this article.
Directed by Daniel Markowicz and Michal Otlowski, who also crafted the screenplay with Michal Kasprzyk, Diablo: The Ultimate Race has the following synopsis: A young man with a passion for fast cars tries to earn money for his sister’s medical care by participating in underground car races.
Directed by Daniel Markowicz and Michal Otlowski, who also crafted the screenplay with Michal Kasprzyk, Diablo: The Ultimate Race has the following synopsis: A young man with a passion for fast cars tries to earn money for his sister’s medical care by participating in underground car races.
- 1/27/2023
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
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