‘Green Border’: immigrants beaten, without a minimum refuge | Culture

A lot of years ago, I think in the Sudan desert, a photograph was published that immediately acquired the status of a horror film. In it, a child is dying and next to him a vulture watches him, more calm than anxious, ready to devour the creature. The man who shot the camera to get that shocking document apparently continued on his way, not picking up the child. And some time later he committed suicide. I don’t know if the reason was that he felt cornered, because his partner abandoned him or because having been a constant witness to so many horrors invited him to leave this world. But I want to think that it was because he continued on his way after capturing the dying creature and the lurking bird. We are very receptive to the hell and helplessness that the most innocent can suffer. Also the image of a dead baby on the sand on a beach in Lesvos shocked all the onlookers in possession of a piece of soul.

In green border, the film directed by the elderly and respected Polish director Agnieszka Holland (75 years old), there are old people, adults, women and children suffering a barbarity that in reality must be everyday. A large group of immigrants suffer from it: Afghans, Lebanese, Syrians… who we are initially introduced to on board a plane and believing that they are going to be taken to the civilized and welcoming Sweden, their land of promise. But they are deposited in a forest, on the border between Belarus and Poland. Nobody wants them there. And the ruthless border guards, using hosts and threats, want to blame the neighbor for the dead. And Sweden becomes for these desperate, beaten, humiliated people an unreal and bitter utopia. Their survival is very difficult. But they receive help from some locals, professional activists in their commitment to those who have nothing or honest people who dare to observe the misfortune of others and react by lending a hand, with the danger that this implies.

Having clarified the sensitive and rational commitment of so many viewers to films that portray social problems, and that of those seeking refuge in Europe is one of the greatest, it is assumed that becoming passionate and moved by these stories is also a function of how they are told. , that in addition to good intentions, art appears in them. green border, filmed in black and white, has exquisite photography. It makes you feel the cold and the elements in which the harassed live. But there are also dead times and repetitive sequences, the feeling sometimes that it has already been told before.

In other words, that telltale gesture of occasionally looking at the clock, that what you see and hear on the screen seems long. And a question that I ask myself too many times in the cinema of recent times. And it is the reason that a notable part of the films have a duration that can be exhaustive, exceeding two and a half or three hours. green border lasts 155 minutes. And you don’t understand the reasons in most of them for excessive footage. My opinion is easy and advantageous. I wouldn’t mind if the saga of The Godfather instead of ten hours it will last twenty. Or thirty. Or forty.

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