Green Border and No Other Land: ‘Border’ cinema as both tool and weapon against oppressive borderisms, b/ordering and othering

Review by In the Frame critic Syarisa Yasin

As part of our In the Frame program, five emerging film critics had the opportunity to watch, reflect on and review films in the Perth Festival Lotterywest Films 2024 – 25 season.

“The curse of our [tribal] people is that we’ve always seen people wielding weapons to kill and hurt us. The weapon that you’re holding is the only weapon that doesn’t hurt us, that gives us some hope.”

Can you guess what that weapon is? 

If you guessed ‘cinema’, you’d be correct. This quote from Karthik Subbaraj’s Tamil western/gangster flick/political activist film Jigarthanda DoubleX highlights the medium’s history with truth telling and depicting real-world atrocities to spark change. And in our times, when human rights abuses against Palestinians and black and brown immigrants in Europe are playing out in real time on our devices and social media apps, contemporary border cinema is following suit in the battle against political propaganda that serves the status quo and crushes disenfranchised voices. 

Fictionalised account Green Border (2023) and documentary No Other Land (2024) might differ in genre and construction, but ultimately both films position the camera as a metaphorical ‘weapon’ to expose and confront oppressive powers through their depiction of borders and borderism as not just static physical boundaries/walls and barbed wire, but as dynamic social and political practices that deem some people worthy of a safe homeland and some unworthy of such. 

Green Border (2023), directed by Polish director Agnieszka Holland, is a narrative fiction film based on the real refugee crisis that erupted on the Belarus-Poland border in 2021. In summary, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko intentionally lured Middle Eastern and African asylum seekers into Belarus with tourist visas in retaliation against EU-imposed sanctions on his dictatorship, with the promise that they could then cross into Poland and other EU countries; only for asylum seekers to find themselves being violently thrust back and forth between the Polish and Belarusian border indefinitely. The film follows the journeys of fictionalised asylum seekers, including a multi-generational Syrian family with small children, and the Polish border security enforcing the cruel limbo status on them, and finally the human rights activists and the everyday Polish citizens who join forces with them to deliver humanitarian aid to the sick and injured – with the catch being that beyond basic medical care, they are not authorised to help the asylum seekers leave the cursed ‘green border’ of the Bialowieza Forest as they are considered a national security threat to the Polish government. Interestingly, the film opens in colour, showing the lush green landscape of the borderlands before switching to black and white during the title sequence, harkening back to the forest’s original history as a site of escape and resistance in Poland during WWII and showing how the land has been repurposed as a site of fear, torture and oppression against migrants, referred to as “live bullets”. 

No Other Land is a Palestinian-Israeli documentary co-production chronicling the destruction and occupation of a village in the West Bank (Masafer Yatta) from 2019 – 23 by the Israeli government who want to use the land as army training grounds. Through both present-day and archival footage, the story follows the life and family legacy of Palestinian activist and Masafer Yatta resident, Basel Adra, and his alliance (occasionally a precarious one due to the power imbalance of privilege) with Israeli activist Yuval Abraham. The Israeli government deems the homes of the largely herding/Bedouin Palestinian community as “illegally built” and terrorises the population with forced daily demolitions and physical violence if they refuse to comply. We can see this loud and clear as mothers and children struggle to take their belongings before watching their homes being destroyed before their very eyes. 

“Every week a new family must decide – endure, or leave this land,” Basel remarks. 

In this film, the ‘border’ isn’t just a physical wall or the physical destruction of property, but an actively suffocating reality materialised by the constant surveillance of Israeli soldiers and settlers. First homes and schools are deemed ‘illegal’ and destroyed, then drinking water wells are filled with concrete as harvesting water requires an ‘official permit’ from the Israeli army, and as viewers we ask ourselves, when does the existence of Palestinians themselves become officially illegal? Why does Israel refuse to say the quiet part out loud? 

The border becomes an active piece of legislation enforced by Israel as the proverbial ‘us’ in opposition to the Palestinians as the ‘them’, and the documentary highlights the nuances within this through Basel and Yuval’s alliance. They both want to end the violence and the erasure, albeit for different reasons –Basel wants liberation and the right for his people to live in his own land, while Yuval believes that security and liberation for Palestinians means security and liberation for Israelis. 

Beyond both films’ depictions of harrowing physical violence (including but not limited to the Green Border soldiers gleefully throwing a pregnant woman over the border and the staggering array of footage of Israeli soldiers and settlers beating and intimidating Palestinians in their own homes) the depiction of ‘paper’ borders and the construction of ideological and social differences between people strikes a chord. “I am an animal here; my only crime is having the world’s worst passport”, a character in Green Border asserts. While Bassel Adra in No Other Land remarks “Our entire world is built on division, between a green man and a yellow man” in reference to the different coloured license plates of Palestinian and Israeli vehicles. In both films, the ‘right’ kinds of people (Yuval Abraham as an Israeli citizen who can traverse the chaotic and occupied Palestinian land and go home for a relaxing long weekend if he so chooses) and the ‘right’ kinds of refugees (Ukranians fleeing the Russian invasion in 2022) are treated with reverence and respect and are allowed to move freely and with dignity between borders. 

The ‘ordering’ aspect of bordering is also deciding who gets access to opportunities to grow and thrive – Basel has a law degree, but has none of the institutional support or platforms to become a lawyer, remarking that it's “like you never went to university in the first place”. On the other hand, Yuval had the opportunity to study Arabic to initially work for the Israeli army’s intelligence branch and also had the privilege of rejecting this pathway to pursue activism. To order, taxonomise and even suppress and penalise human beings based on a global lottery of birth is neither just nor sustainable – and No Other Land makes this loud and clear to its viewers. 

There is still something to be said about how both films could only really get exposure and prestige through their inherent connections to the dominant Western systems of power – in particular for No Other Land, which is inevitably ‘legitimised’ for the Western world through its construction as an Israeli-Palestinian co-production that inevitably diminishes the significant disadvantages of the Palestinian voice in favour of a palatable ‘both sides’ solution. As for Green Border, some could argue that it is just one film in a long line of European art-house films that garner acclaim and praise for a moment but do little to bring about actual significant change. 

With that being said, I believe these films are still a net positive overall in raising awareness and galvanising everyday people to take action against current atrocities. 

Agnieszka Holland asserts: “I don’t believe one film can change a difficult, global situation. But it can change the sensibility of some people, and every single person counts”. 

Similarly, Basel Adra asserts: “Through the relationship between me and Yuval, we wanted to show the power imbalance between Palestinians and Israelis, how politicians deny the discrimination against Palestinians, how Yuval has freedom and rights and I haven’t, how he can travel freely and I can’t”.

“The camera is the one and only tool we have” says Adra and I agree – and I can only hope that more filmmakers keep rolling.