This is an emotionally charged, deeply troubling drama about the struggles of families displaced by war to resettle in the safety of Western Europe. Arriving by land over the Polish border from Belarus, they should by rights be able to claim asylum and be placed in a detention center until the merits of their case are heard. Instead, they are rounded up and dumped back on the eastern side of the barbed wire fence with as much brutality as the guards can muster. And then the game begins again. Veteran Agnieszka Holland — whose prolific career runs the gamut from The Secret Garden to In Darkness and episodes of The Wire and House of Cards — approaches the story from several different vantage points, including the refugees’ perspective and the guards’, but you will never doubt where her moral conscience lies. Shot in stark black and white, this is utterly compelling cinema; a timely, vehement denunciation of resurgent fascism and the quiescence which enables it.
Special Jury Prize, Venice 2023
Community Partner
Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Tomasz Włosok, Behi Djanati Atai, Mohamad Al Rashi, Dalia Naous
Poland/Czech Republic/France/Belgium
2023
Showcase
In Polish, English and Arabic with English subtitles
Violence, Depictions of Racism
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Executive Producer
Mike Downey, Jeff Field
Producer
Fred Bernstein, Agnieszka Holland, Marcin Wierzchoslawski
Screenwriter
Agnieszka Holland, Gabriela Lazarkiewicz-Sieczko, Maciej Pisuk
Cinematography
Tomasz Naumiuk
Original Music
Frederic Vercheval
Director
Agnieszka Holland
Agnieszka Holland is a three-time US Academy Award nominee (for Angry Harvest; Europa, Europa and In Darkness). She directed her first feature, Provincial Actors, in 1978. Since the 1990s she has worked regularly in the United States on films like Total Eclipse, Copying Beethoven and Mr Jones, and on TV series like The Wire, House of Cards, The Killing and Treme.
Filmography: Europa, Europa (1990); The Secret Garden (1993); Washington Square (1997); In Darkness (2011); Charlatan (2020)
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