"Helping is not illegal." Kino Lorber has revealed an official US trailer for an urgent, acclaimed Polish film titled Green Border, the latest from the masterful Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland. This premiered at last year's 2023 Venice Film Festival in the fall, where it won a Special Jury Prize at the end. Thirty years after Europa Europa, three-time Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland brings a masterful eye for realism and deep compassion to this blistering critique of a humanitarian calamity that continues to unfold. The B&w film follows family of refugees from Syria, an English teacher from Afghanistan, and a border guard, who all meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis in Belarus. Green Border is a poignant and essential work of cinema that opens our eyes and speaks to the heart, challenging viewers to reflect on the moral choices that fall to ordinary people every day. Yes it's harrowing and unforgettable.
- 5/7/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Anatomy of a Fall French producer Marie-Ange Luciani put in a flying appearance at the Berlinale this week with Claire Burger’s coming-of-age drama Langue Étrangère which received a warm reception in competition.
With the Berlin premiere taking place the day after the Baftas in London (where Anatomy of a Fall won Best Screenplay) and eight days before the January 27 voting deadline for this year’s Academy Awards, Luciani was also in the thick of the awards campaign.
She co-produced the Oscar hopeful with David Thion at Les Films Pelléas under the banner of her Paris-based banner Les Films de Pierre, the company created by Yves Saint Laurent’s long-time business and life partner Pierre Bergé which she acquired on his death in 2018.
New production Langue Étrangère is a bittersweet coming-of-age tale starring Lilith Grasmug as French teenager Fanny who travels to Germany on language exchange trip. Her German counterpart...
With the Berlin premiere taking place the day after the Baftas in London (where Anatomy of a Fall won Best Screenplay) and eight days before the January 27 voting deadline for this year’s Academy Awards, Luciani was also in the thick of the awards campaign.
She co-produced the Oscar hopeful with David Thion at Les Films Pelléas under the banner of her Paris-based banner Les Films de Pierre, the company created by Yves Saint Laurent’s long-time business and life partner Pierre Bergé which she acquired on his death in 2018.
New production Langue Étrangère is a bittersweet coming-of-age tale starring Lilith Grasmug as French teenager Fanny who travels to Germany on language exchange trip. Her German counterpart...
- 2/23/2024
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Claire Burger has used the troubled lives of the non-bourgeois to measure the pulse of culture since at least her 2009 César-winning short film It’s Free for Girls, which she co-directed with Marie Amachoukeli (Àma Gloria). That film addressed revenge porn before the phenomenon became such a common one, through the story of a working-class girl whose dream of getting her hairdressing diploma is derailed by a filmed sexual act.
In Burger’s tender and surprisingly funny third feature, Langue Étrangère, the issue du jour is the multiplicity of simultaneous crises that young people in Europe and beyond have to contend with today: from fascism to climate change, from structural racism to police brutality. Most significantly, and one of the reasons why this is such a necessary film, Burger links contemporary Europe’s political chaos to its psychic disarray. Might young people’s urge to protest collectively not also function...
In Burger’s tender and surprisingly funny third feature, Langue Étrangère, the issue du jour is the multiplicity of simultaneous crises that young people in Europe and beyond have to contend with today: from fascism to climate change, from structural racism to police brutality. Most significantly, and one of the reasons why this is such a necessary film, Burger links contemporary Europe’s political chaos to its psychic disarray. Might young people’s urge to protest collectively not also function...
- 2/20/2024
- by Diego Semerene
- Slant Magazine
Crossing several borders at once, the coming-of-age romance Langue Étrangère leaps over state lines, overcomes language barriers and defies heteronormative boundaries to tell the story of two 17-year-old pen pals who fall for one another while visiting their mutual homes to brush up on their German and French.
Directed by Claire Burger — herself a native of the Franco-German frontier city of Forbach — this tender and at times tense drama is carried by superb young leads Lilith Grasmug and Josefa Heinsius, the latter making her screen debut. They play a pair of teenage girls whose cross-cultural exchange induces sexual and political awakenings they can’t always control, bringing them together but also tearing them away from their families. Premiering in Berlin’s main competition, Burger’s touching third feature is a small film with a big heart that could cross outside of Europe’s borders as well.
What’s fascinating about...
Directed by Claire Burger — herself a native of the Franco-German frontier city of Forbach — this tender and at times tense drama is carried by superb young leads Lilith Grasmug and Josefa Heinsius, the latter making her screen debut. They play a pair of teenage girls whose cross-cultural exchange induces sexual and political awakenings they can’t always control, bringing them together but also tearing them away from their families. Premiering in Berlin’s main competition, Burger’s touching third feature is a small film with a big heart that could cross outside of Europe’s borders as well.
What’s fascinating about...
- 2/20/2024
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The Berlin Film Festival on Monday unveiled the titles selected for its official competition and its sidebar Encounters competitive section.
A total of 20 films have been selected for the international competition, with highlights including La Cocina, directed by Alonso Ruiz Palacios and starring Rooney Mara. The pic is described as a “kinetic and cinematic love story” set over a single day in a Times Square kitchen. French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop returns with Dahomey, a 60-minute doc about art repatriation and Hong Sangsoo plays in competition with A Traveler’s Needs, starring Isabelle Huppert. Scroll down for the full lineup.
The Berlin Film Festival takes place February 15-25.
Organizers have already announced more than 100 titles across sidebars spanning Panorama, Forum, and Berlinale Special. Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, a feature documentary about influential British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger narrated by Killers of the Flower Moon...
A total of 20 films have been selected for the international competition, with highlights including La Cocina, directed by Alonso Ruiz Palacios and starring Rooney Mara. The pic is described as a “kinetic and cinematic love story” set over a single day in a Times Square kitchen. French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop returns with Dahomey, a 60-minute doc about art repatriation and Hong Sangsoo plays in competition with A Traveler’s Needs, starring Isabelle Huppert. Scroll down for the full lineup.
The Berlin Film Festival takes place February 15-25.
Organizers have already announced more than 100 titles across sidebars spanning Panorama, Forum, and Berlinale Special. Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, a feature documentary about influential British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger narrated by Killers of the Flower Moon...
- 1/22/2024
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
‘How To Have Sex’, ‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’ and ‘The Promised Land’ were also decorated.
It was a strong night for Anatomy Of A Fall at this year’s European Film Awards, taking home five awards at this evening’s (December 9) ceremony in Berlin.
French filmmaker Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner continued its triumphant streak, having recently scored the Bifa for best international independent film and best international feature and screenplay at the Gothams. The mystery thriller, which Triet co-wrote with her partner Arthur Harari, and stars Sandra Hüller, clinched the prizes in the European film, director, screenwriter and actress categories,...
It was a strong night for Anatomy Of A Fall at this year’s European Film Awards, taking home five awards at this evening’s (December 9) ceremony in Berlin.
French filmmaker Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner continued its triumphant streak, having recently scored the Bifa for best international independent film and best international feature and screenplay at the Gothams. The mystery thriller, which Triet co-wrote with her partner Arthur Harari, and stars Sandra Hüller, clinched the prizes in the European film, director, screenwriter and actress categories,...
- 12/9/2023
- by Mona Tabbara
- ScreenDaily
It’s a strange time for Agnieszka Holland. Green Border, the new film from the acclaimed Polish director — a three-time Oscar nominee — just celebrated the best opening for a Polish movie in cinemas this year with 137,000 admissions over its first weekend, according to local distributor Kino Świat. It’s particularly impressive given that the film, a black-and-white drama depicting the real-life plight of refugees stranded on the natural border between Poland and Belarus, can be a rough watch.
In late 2021, thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Africa were lured to the Polish border by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who cynically engineered a geopolitical crisis, promising migrants easy passage over the Polish border into the European Union. But the Polish government refused to let them in, leaving families stranded and starving in the swampy, treacherous forests between the two countries. Holland’s film intertwines the perspectives of the stranded refugees,...
In late 2021, thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Africa were lured to the Polish border by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who cynically engineered a geopolitical crisis, promising migrants easy passage over the Polish border into the European Union. But the Polish government refused to let them in, leaving families stranded and starving in the swampy, treacherous forests between the two countries. Holland’s film intertwines the perspectives of the stranded refugees,...
- 9/26/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
If cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland’s new film is one precision-tooled specimen.
This profoundly moving, flawlessly executed multi-strand drama, shot in stark black and white, tracks refugees from various nations in 2021 trying to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. With inevitably tragic consequences, they become pawns in a gruesome game of “pass the parcel” between guards on both sides of the title’s green border, the dividing line between European Union member Poland and Russia ally Belarus.
Although the violence shown isn’t gratuitous, the suffering in Green Border (Zielona granica) is painfully palpable. There is a moment where a Pole, a minor character in the story, refuses to look at a video on a friend’s phone showing a border guard beating a migrant; Holland’s film implicitly confronts everyone — and that would be most of us — who...
This profoundly moving, flawlessly executed multi-strand drama, shot in stark black and white, tracks refugees from various nations in 2021 trying to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. With inevitably tragic consequences, they become pawns in a gruesome game of “pass the parcel” between guards on both sides of the title’s green border, the dividing line between European Union member Poland and Russia ally Belarus.
Although the violence shown isn’t gratuitous, the suffering in Green Border (Zielona granica) is painfully palpable. There is a moment where a Pole, a minor character in the story, refuses to look at a video on a friend’s phone showing a border guard beating a migrant; Holland’s film implicitly confronts everyone — and that would be most of us — who...
- 9/6/2023
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
While you’re still in the vice-like grip of its multilevel narrative it may not feel like it, but a film like Agnieszka Holland’s bruisingly powerful new refugee drama ultimately comes from a place of optimism. It is optimistic to expect and to nurture a reaction of potentially motivating outrage, when you portray the brutality of which human individuals, at the behest of human institutions, are capable. It is optimistic to believe that, faced with extraordinary cruelty, a viewer’s ordinary decency will be compelled to rise and rebel. “Green Border” is a heart-in-mouth thriller set on the Polish-Belarusian border that wraps its social critique in the razor wire of punchy, intelligent cinematic craft in order to elicit precisely such emotions. If we can feel the horror, perhaps there is hope.
It is 2021 and a Syrian family are fleeing Isis and their ravaged hometown of Harasta on an airplane bound for Belarus.
It is 2021 and a Syrian family are fleeing Isis and their ravaged hometown of Harasta on an airplane bound for Belarus.
- 9/5/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
As if to come to the aid of her national cinema after the debacle that was Roman Polanski’s The Palace, Poland’s Agnieszka Holland, soon to turn 75, restores some of her homeland’s cultural dignity with a devastating exposé that angrily, and quite brilliantly, questions its humanity and political integrity. At 144 minutes, and in black and white, it is not exactly a Trojan horse, and its moral rigor does not come with a spoonful of sugar. But Green Border earns every second of that running time, and with a focus and energy that belies its director’s age. Awards-wise, this may prove to be the international feature to beat.
It begins in October 2021 with Chapter 1: The Family, in which a Syrian couple, Bashir and Amina, their three children and their grandfather are traveling on a plane from Turkey to Belarus. Their mood is upbeat; they are planning to go from Belarus to Poland,...
It begins in October 2021 with Chapter 1: The Family, in which a Syrian couple, Bashir and Amina, their three children and their grandfather are traveling on a plane from Turkey to Belarus. Their mood is upbeat; they are planning to go from Belarus to Poland,...
- 9/5/2023
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique has closed multiple territory deals on Agnieszka Holland’s “The Green Border,” which just completed principal photography in Poland.
The film has been sold to Condor (France), September Films (Benelux), Movies Inspired (Italy), Leopardo Filmes (Portugal), McF Megacom (former Yugoslavia), Kino Swiat (Poland) and Aqs (Czech Rep./Slovakia).
“The Green Border” tells the story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko, who opened the country’s doors to migrants as a back door to enter the EU.
The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.
A co-production between Poland,...
The film has been sold to Condor (France), September Films (Benelux), Movies Inspired (Italy), Leopardo Filmes (Portugal), McF Megacom (former Yugoslavia), Kino Swiat (Poland) and Aqs (Czech Rep./Slovakia).
“The Green Border” tells the story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko, who opened the country’s doors to migrants as a back door to enter the EU.
The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.
A co-production between Poland,...
- 5/18/2023
- by Leo Barraclough and Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Rolling off a successful collaboration on “Charlatan,” Films Boutique has boarded Agnieszka Holland’s next film “The Green Border,” which just completed principal photography in Poland.
Now in post production, “The Green Border” tells the fateful story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by President Lukaschenko opening doors to migrants in Belarus as a back door to enter the EU.
The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.
A co-production between Poland, France, Belgium and the Czech Republic, “The Green Border” is produced by Marcin Wierzchosławski (Metro Films), Fred Bernstein (Astute Films) and Holland. Co-producers are Maria Blicharska,...
Now in post production, “The Green Border” tells the fateful story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by President Lukaschenko opening doors to migrants in Belarus as a back door to enter the EU.
The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.
A co-production between Poland, France, Belgium and the Czech Republic, “The Green Border” is produced by Marcin Wierzchosławski (Metro Films), Fred Bernstein (Astute Films) and Holland. Co-producers are Maria Blicharska,...
- 5/10/2023
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
A scene from Neighbours, one of the films at the virtual 2022 St. Louis Jewish Film Festival through March 13.
Courtesy of St. Louis International Film Festival and Sljff
The 2022 St. Louis Jewish Film Festival is virtual again this year, meaning all films can be streamed through the festival website through March 13. For tickets and more information, visit their website https://jccstl.com/arts-ideas/st-louis-jewish-film-festival. One the best films at this year’s St. Louis Jewish Film Festival is
One of this year’s best Jewish-interest films is “Neighbours” (Nachbarn), a Swiss film set in Syria 40 years ago, in a small village where Kurdish and Jewish families are neighbors. Actually, at this point, there is only one Jewish family left in the village, although there used to be more, a change due to the increasingly hostile policies of the ruling Baathist party. There is a lot of sly satire and humor in...
Courtesy of St. Louis International Film Festival and Sljff
The 2022 St. Louis Jewish Film Festival is virtual again this year, meaning all films can be streamed through the festival website through March 13. For tickets and more information, visit their website https://jccstl.com/arts-ideas/st-louis-jewish-film-festival. One the best films at this year’s St. Louis Jewish Film Festival is
One of this year’s best Jewish-interest films is “Neighbours” (Nachbarn), a Swiss film set in Syria 40 years ago, in a small village where Kurdish and Jewish families are neighbors. Actually, at this point, there is only one Jewish family left in the village, although there used to be more, a change due to the increasingly hostile policies of the ruling Baathist party. There is a lot of sly satire and humor in...
- 3/13/2022
- by Cate Marquis
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Lille, France — “I must down to the seas again,” Amaré, an teen African illegal immigrant, reads aloud in a poetry lesson at a refugee center near the beach in Greece.
Thoughts of wander-lust seen comically out of place. Amaré has just been seen in the prolog to “Eden” leaping out of a dinghy beaching on a Greek beach, to the dumfounded puzzlement of its tourists.
He and the other immigrants in “Eden” are never, moreover, in a position to escape constraints: The wait for residence permits, menial jobs even for the highly-qualified; the pressure to make the academic grade in a new country; above all, the past, which often leaves huge emotional and ethical hostages to fortune.
One of the biggest canvas European drama series on show at Series Mania this year, “Eden” weaves five character-driven, and sometimes-converging, stories.
There’s Helene, the chic but principled French head of an Athens run-for profit refugee center,...
Thoughts of wander-lust seen comically out of place. Amaré has just been seen in the prolog to “Eden” leaping out of a dinghy beaching on a Greek beach, to the dumfounded puzzlement of its tourists.
He and the other immigrants in “Eden” are never, moreover, in a position to escape constraints: The wait for residence permits, menial jobs even for the highly-qualified; the pressure to make the academic grade in a new country; above all, the past, which often leaves huge emotional and ethical hostages to fortune.
One of the biggest canvas European drama series on show at Series Mania this year, “Eden” weaves five character-driven, and sometimes-converging, stories.
There’s Helene, the chic but principled French head of an Athens run-for profit refugee center,...
- 3/22/2019
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
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