Polish film director Agnieszka Holland is demanding an apology from Poland’s justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro who compared her film Green Border to “Nazi propaganda” because it reveals the stark problems of migrants trapped on the nation’s border with Belarus.
Ziobro, who is the founding member of the conservative Sovereign Poland Party, claimed that Holland’s film is anti-Polish propaganda, akin to that of fascist regimes in the past.
“In the Third Reich, the Germans produced propaganda films showing Poles as bandits and murderers. Today they have Agnieszka Holland for that,” Ziobro wrote September 4 on X, formerly known as Twitter, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Holland, who has directed two films following the plight of Jews during World War Two (1990’s Europa, Europa and the 2011 Oscar-nominated In Darkness), was infuriated that Ziobro compared her latest film about the migrant crisis on the Polish border to Nazi propaganda and is demanding an apology.
Holland not only wants an apology by September 11, but she is also demanding that Ziobro donate 50,000 Polish zlotys ($11,600) to a Holocaust survivor fund. She is threatening to bring defamation charges against him if he fails to comply.
“I cannot remain indifferent to such an open and brutal attack by a person who holds the very important constitutional position of minister of justice and prosecutor general in Poland,” Holland wrote in a statement from Venice and published in Poland on September 7.
The director found support from Polish directors and the European Film Association which have defended her against the accusation of propaganda.
“The Polish government and the media subservient to them [have] decided to slander Agnieszka Holland in the name of vulgar propaganda and defamation of distinguished artists unheard of since the restoration of independence in 1989 [they] ruthlessly smeared her and her film, Green Border, which none of those venom-spitting apparatchiks could have seen,” Renata Czarnkowska, president of Poland’s Women in Film Association, said in an open letter.
Green Border is a sympathetic treatment of the plight of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East that has developed over the last few years. The migrants are enticed by claims that they can easily slip into Poland through the Belarusian border. But instead of gaining easy access to Europe, the migrants find a closed Polish border and become trapped in the forested areas between the two countries. They are left in the forest without food, water, or facilities.
“Our film is an attempt to give a voice to those who have no voice. The problem of migration will grow, and soon it will affect each of us. Meanwhile, in Poland it is presented one-sidedly, exclusively from the perspective of government propaganda, which is interested in only one thing — to scare our society,” Holland exclaimed.
“Agnieszka Holland’s films are very often about courage, and about fearlessness in the face of injustice,” said Green Border producer Mike Downey. He added that Holland is suffering intense personal attacks. The chairman of the European Film Academy added, “Agnieszka is coming under huge personal and public attack in Poland, and it is such acts of solidarity which reflect the extraordinary job she does in speaking out against injustice and oppression. We are all in agreement. Staying silent is not an option.”
Green Border first appeared at the Toronto Film Festival and will debut in Poland on September 22.
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