[ad_1]
Agnieszka Holland is a prolific Polish director. In a profession spanning greater than fifty years, she has scored quite a few essential successes, together with her movies Europa Europa (1990) and In Darkness (2011). Her work has gained quite a few awards.
Her newest movie, Inexperienced Border (launched in 2023 in Poland) depicts the remedy of migrants on the Polish-Belarusian border. Inexperienced Border, which has been vilified by Poland’s far proper, gained the Particular Jury Prize on the Venice Movie Pageant in 2023. We met her on the premiere in Brussels.
Voxeurop: Why did you make this movie?
Agnieszka Holland: I have been following the migration state of affairs carefully since 2015. I’ve watched Europe’s confused, cowardly and inconsistent response. However when the difficulty got here knocking at my door, I felt obliged to talk out. Not least as a result of I’ve devoted a lot of my profession to telling the tales of crimes in opposition to humanity.
Your movie was controversial, and you’ve got been threatened and abused. How are you as we speak, how do you’re feeling?
It is getting higher, as a result of the ultra-conservative nationalist authorities that attacked me misplaced the election. After all, the nation has not modified utterly. The previous authorities undermined the legislation and establishments with their very own unconstitutional legal guidelines and now it is rather arduous to undo this. Particularly because the nation’s president nonetheless comes from this conservative occasion [the far-right Law and Justice party, PiS]. He cannot stand any try to alter legal guidelines. [The democratic battle] has been gained, nevertheless it’s not simple to translate into actuality.
However, though the environment has modified, there are nonetheless 30-35% of the inhabitants who assist this authoritarian populism, which has the enchantment of nationalism and is commonly tinged with racism.
However the individuals who went to see the movie had been very moved and requested a whole lot of trustworthy and essential questions. And that is what we wished to awaken: an consciousness that we should resist a state of affairs that’s occurring not simply in Poland, however throughout Europe.
Have the assaults on you calmed down?
Sure, and this authorities has no curiosity or authority in attacking me, even when it continues to take action in small methods. However we dwell in a divided world, and Polish society could be very polarised, fairly like American society. Populists have this expertise for manipulating the human mind to the purpose the place individuals begin to comply with them, like a cult. You see it with Trump and his supporters. In Poland it isn’t on the identical stage after all, and the nation is on a distinct scale too, however the state of affairs is comparable.
In any case we had been an incredible success with the viewers. I feel that by asking these questions, and by exhibiting the human beings who had been depicted by the propaganda as paedophile terrorists, zoophiles, and weapons of Lukashenka, we managed to open up the talk, and in addition to awaken a sort of collective empathy.
Talking of the change of regime, it is true that migration coverage was notably brutal within the Poland of PiS. Are you extra optimistic now?
For the second, we aren’t seeing any main adjustments. They’ve fired just a few officers, together with probably the most senior border guards who had been the face of the brutality. However the coverage will not be altering, or not a lot. We’re placing strain on them, speaking to them, and listening to that the push-backs are mandatory however that they are going to be carried out humanely, which is an oxymoron.
However a minimum of they are not mendacity, they are not saying terrible issues, they are not utilizing Nazi and racist language. We will have a dialogue with them, and we’ll sustain the strain. Public opinion is extra delicate than it was just a few months in the past.
Is it that violence is important for the dehumanisation of refugees, an important situation for the authorities to behave as they do?
Sure. To begin with, I am delicate to the state of affairs of migrants at our borders as a result of I recognise the trail that a number of international locations have embarked upon. I made three movies in regards to the Shoah, in regards to the years 1930-1940. I see how sure issues have began to occur once more. First, it is the choice: you determine who has the correct to dwell, to be handled with dignity. You then dehumanise them.
The Polish state propaganda was shameless. The inside minister held a press convention that turned infamous – in Poland at any charge – the place he stated that [migrants] had been probably not individuals, that they had been before everything Lukashenka’s weapons, terrorists, rapists, paedophiles and zoophiles. The purpose was actually to create concern, and in addition to deprive these individuals of their voice and their particular person destinies, to indicate them as a harmful and repulsive mass.
Obtain the most effective of European journalism straight to your inbox each Thursday
So, in spite of everything this repression, after these push-backs, after the brutality, the ultimate stage is annihilation. That is what scares me. As a result of I hear the phrases of sure right-wing politicians, who discuss brazenly about utilizing weapons in opposition to refugees, each in Europe – in Italy, for instance, or within the Netherlands – and in Texas.
So what ought to we do politically?
Above all, we must always resist the state of affairs: analyse it, focus on it, search for the explanations, and in addition attempt to change individuals’s minds. Not by scary them, however by exhibiting them constructive pictures of actuality. In spite of everything, Europe is shrinking, it’s a continent that’s disappearing demographically, it’s ageing, and it wants new residents.
However I feel it is basically a alternative between consolation and values. In the event you take a look at the results of as we speak’s state of affairs, you see that the logical subsequent step is, for instance, not simply to push the boats again into the Mediterranean however to bomb them, and to create a sort of fortress the place we shoot anybody who comes shut sufficient to remove our consolation. After which that is the tip of the Europe of democracy and human rights.
However some European residents, who could also be delicate to the arguments of the far proper with out essentially being fascists or neo-Nazis, are genuinely afraid of what refugees may convey.
Sure, after all. That is why I say that the selection is between consolation and values. As a result of we’re very privileged in Europe, and we must always share our comforts at such instances as these. It is a type of extending rights. You recognize, 300 years in the past, rights solely belonged to wealthy, heterosexual, white males. However then we accepted that kids additionally had rights, as did girls, slaves, individuals of color, homosexuals, and so forth. We make progress, however there’s all the time a backlash from those that have a monopoly on the legislation. And it is a lot the identical with migration.
In any case, we’ve got to keep away from accepting the language of the far proper and the fascists. I refuse to speak about migrants as something apart from human beings with their very own lives, their very own selections, their very own wants – the identical primary wants as ours. And it is our accountability to share.
It was attention-grabbing to see how simply and enthusiastically the Poles opened their houses to Ukrainian refugees. Poland has welcomed greater than 1,000,000 newcomers, and nothing horrible has occurred. The nation has not change into poorer, quite the opposite, it has some financial advantages. Individuals are additionally extra beneficiant. You recognize, individuals are usually narcissistic. After they look within the mirror – until they seem to be a bit bizarre – they wish to see magnificence mirrored again.
Inexperienced Border is a really powerful, very brutal movie. As you say, it is fairly pessimistic about what Europe is as we speak. However for you, what’s Europe? Is it nonetheless a gorgeous challenge that must be defended?
Completely, it is a gorgeous challenge, one of the crucial stunning initiatives of humanity. To let it fail could be a horrible waste. It could price a whole lot of human lives, not simply the lives of migrants, individuals from elsewhere, but in addition the lives of our white residents. I am fairly pessimistic, as a result of I feel it is all the time a lot simpler to domesticate evil than to domesticate good.
Right here, the accountability of the authorities, whether or not political or non secular, is big. At present’s world is so difficult and stuffed with challenges that persons are misplaced. Modernity is extraordinarily complicated and there are such a lot of risks. Individuals are in search of somebody to inform them “we’ve got quite simple solutions to your complicated questions, we all know what to do”. And these populists win as a result of they supply precisely that reply. However even for those who give it a distinct identify, the fact would not change, it is nonetheless there.
[ad_2]
Source link