29 March 2024.
By Neptune
GREEN BORDER **** (vo Polish, Russian, English, Arabic…)
We first see the Syrian family – from the stately grandfather to his son’s family including wife, children and a baby – on a flight from Turkey to Belarus, where they have plans to go to relatives in Sweden. Fleeing from the horrors of the Syrian war, they have all their papers, their baggage and dreams of a peaceful life in Europe. There is also a lone Afghani woman, a teacher, who speaks English and helps them with some translations and with calming the children. But their innocent dreams will all soon be shattered.
Their relative in Sweden, in phone contact with them, has arranged and prepaid for a van at the airport to take them to the Polish border and on to freedom. As she has no transport, they take the Afghani lady with them. But, halfway en route, the driver asks them for more money to continue and then throws them out in the middle of the woods. And so starts their hellish calvary, caught between two countries – Poland and Belarus – who treat refugees like animals, pushing them back and forth between them through the barb-wired fences in the so-called green border.
In this black-and-white film that looks and feels like a documentary, the renowned Polish-born director Agnieszka Holland has created a work of incredible power and fury. It won the Special Jury Prize at last year’s Venice film festival and is essential to our understanding the tragedies of the now more than 110,000,000 displaced people in the world (according to the UNHCR) due to wars, famine and totalitarian governments. Holland shows that dire reality in this film, with a mainly unknown but exceptional ensemble cast, by intertwining the different groups that make up these brutal misfortunes:
There are the decent immigrants who have now become terrified, homeless refugees and pawns in the geopolitical enmities between Belarus and Poland. There is the inhuman treatment by the Belarus border patrols, and the indiscriminate Polish training of their border guards, with one decent exception. And there is the local, clandestine activist group that works day and night trying to help the bewildered refugees.
By daring to show the many sides of the truth, Holland has been vilified in Poland as a traitor to her land and has had death threats thrown at her. Fortunately she lives in France and has had an international career that spans from TV (“House of Cards”) to her Oscar-nominated films, such as “Europa, Europa”, about the injustices of this world. She has said that she knows she cannot change the world, but feels it is her obligation to try.
This film is a must for those who care and for those who don’t know, and the final scenes present another devastating truth of how biased and unjust our values are….
(Showing at the Grütli Cinemas) Run to it before it’s gone!
ONE LIFE ***
Anthony Hopkins portrays the elderly Nicholas Winton, the man who saved 669 children just before the outbreak of WWII, in this reenactment of a true occurrence. It was 1938 and these were the children of desperate, mostly Jewish, refugees from various countries massed together in miserable conditions in Czechoslovakia, where Nazi power was already evident.
This film by TV director James Hawes combines the two episodes of Winton’s life – his young years (played by Johnny Flynn) between London and Prague, when his mother, portrayed by the always excellent Helena Bonham Carter, was a crucial help in the rescue operation; and his later years in London when his work was discovered on the popular TV show “That’s Life” in 1988. He was later knighted by the Queen and lived to be 106, becoming close to the many now grown-up individuals whom he had saved.
As a young successful stockbroker, Winton took a great risk in travelling to Prague at such a perilous moment, but he was determined to save the lives of these innocents along with two other devoted refugee workers stationed in Prague – Trevor Chadwick and Doreen Warriner – who should have gotten more credit for their brave participation in England’s Kindertransport program, which saved thousands of European children during the war.
When one sees these moving films about the tragedies of displaced people, one can’t help but compare them to what is happening in front of our eyes today in the unending conflicts in Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, many parts of Africa, Myanmar and beyond, and reflect upon the unthinkable fact that 13,000 children have perished in Gaza since the beginning of this latest war. One wonders who will rescue the rest of them, and the multitude of unknown victims around the world…
KUNG FU PANDA 4
What can I say about a film that I left after half an hour?
I and so many others delighted in the first animated Panda film which came out in 2008, with its naive spirituality and adorable characters from baby Po to the crane, monkey, tiger and scores of cute pigs discovering each other in various adventures.
This latest one felt far more hectic and violent, something that is not appropriate for the children and adolescents it is intended for. I couldn’t take all the mayhem and Po revelling in his media success and even saying he just wants ‘to kick ass’….I was getting a headache, so I left.
Sorry, so take your chance, or better yet – take your kids to see “Robot Dreams”, the best animated film of the year, a tender tale about loneliness and friendship, nominated at the Oscars. Unfortunately, it’s gone from our screens, but it seems you can catch it on AppleTV.
Superb **** Very Good *** Good ** Mediocre * Miserable – no stars
By Neptune
Neptune Ravar Ingwersen reviews film extensively for publications in Switzerland. She views 4 to 8 films a week and her aim is to sort the wheat from the chaff for readers.
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