New dramas look at migration from differing perspectives
On September 22, the deputy prime minister of the Polish government, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, called an emergency press conference in order to denounce a film. Agnieszka Holland’s drama “The Green Border” had its domestic premiere that day, causing heaps of reactions. The film is about refugees who find themselves on the border between Belarus and Poland (and therefore the EU), and the inhumane treatment they face from the authorities of both countries.
“The way the movie depicts the Polish border force, the army and the police is just shameful, heinous and disgusting,” stated Kaczynski, who went as far as to claim that Holland was a Vladimir Putin supporter.
Asimina Proedrou’s “Behind the Haystacks” was recently selected by the Greek Culture Ministry to represent Greece in the long list of nominees for the Oscar Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. The film is set in a village near Doiran Lake, shared between North Macedonia and Greece, where, in order to deal with his financial problems, a farmer (Stathis Stamoulakatos) gets involved in a migrant trafficking ring.
“I decided to shoot the film in the area for aesthetic purposes. The lake has a beauty that mesmerized me. When we first visited the lake in 2015, however, it coincided with a period of intense migration flows. Speaking to the people there, they told us how they crossed the border from Idomeni into North Macedonia hoping to reach Northern Europe, but the authorities there ended up sending them back to Greece. That’s how I decided to include the topic of migration in the film, it’s not its primary theme. Also, the perspective of the refugees is not portrayed in the film, only of the Greeks that they interact with, like the trafficker, the women that offer help etc,” says Proedrou.
Although focused on other social issues, the film includes migration as an added ill in an already tough situation. “I thought this specific topic would give a more international dimension, since there is talk of closing the borders of Northern European countries, violating the Schengen Agreement and putting even more pressure on already desperate people.”
Agnieszka Holland’s film, on the other hand, addresses migration from various perspectives: of the migrants/refugees, of a Polish border officer, and of the activists in the area. What sparked reactions in her home country was the bold depiction of the barbaric pushbacks (with insults, beatings, and even murders) on the part of the state authorities. In Proedrou’s film, there are no such implications. On the contrary, the authorities are notable in their absence, thus leaving the situation in the hands of either local exploiters or troubled individuals.
When we ask Proedrou about the role of migration in modern cinema, her response is rather discouraging. “In cinema, even in the so-called arthouse films, there are directions and trends. At times, there are types of films that receive more funding and promotion. My speculation is that, currently, the cinema market is not that interested in the issue of migration. There are sales agents who have even told me personally that migration is now considered outdated. There certainly are trends and directions in the world of cinema, without that necessarily being absolute or universal,” she noted.
As she points out, however, it does matter who and where the filmmaker is. For instance, Holland may have been treated badly in her own country, but a couple of weeks earlier she was praised at the Venice Film Festival, at which she won the Grand Jury Prize. The same thing happened with Matteo Garrone, who received the director’s award for “Io Capitano,” a film devoted to the odyssey that migrants from Africa suffer through to get to Europe.
