Polish auteur Agnieszka Holland warned that mass migration will become the “biggest humanitarian crisis of the 21st century”, during a conversation with social researchers from across Europe. 

The Oscar-nominated filmmaker was addressing the interlinked subjects of migration, democracy and climate change, key themes of the latest Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) conference in Warsaw. 

Researchers heard how refugees have died in appalling circumstances on the border between Poland and Belarus after being refused sanctuary in either country and left stranded in the woods without food or water.

This situation is unflinchingly depicted in Holland’s latest film, Green Border, a shattering dramatisation of real life events, taking place against a backdrop of Russian hybrid warfare intended to destabilise the European Union. 

And, at the time of writing, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk – the former president of the European Council - was being condemned by human rights activists after announcing fresh plans to suspend the right to asylum. 

The human impact of draconian migration policies on the edge of the EU is captured in Green Border, screened at the city’s Palace of Culture and Science as part of the conference, with the director appearing afterwards to take questions. 

“The crisis of democracy is very well visible in the migration crisis as well as in the climate crisis,” Holland said. “They are both crises which need a lot of collaboration, and global research and global decisions. 

“They are global and it's impossible to resolve them in an individual way. No country can even start to deal with those situations, and at the same time we see that it's impossible, collaboration is against the interest of the political class in many countries. 

“What is really depressing is that regardless of if it's a populist, authoritarian regime or if it's democratic, liberal, even leftist regime, the reaction is the same.

“Evacuate all possible problems onto a scapegoat and show how mighty we are when we are closing the border, pretending that we are defending the security of the country – it's the easiest way to keep the power.”

In keeping with the themes explored throughout Holland’s career, Green Border brings to life the experience of the human beings who find themselves caught in the midst of political conflict.  

Holland has been nominated for Oscars three times

In this case, it’s the people encouraged to attempt the journey to Europe as part of what Tusk has described as a Russian mission to drive anti-migration sentiment in the EU and tie up resources. 

Holland attentively tells the stories of the families travelling from the Middle East and Africa in pursuit of a better life – and the brutality they’re forced to endure. 

She also depicts the lives of the Polish border guards who violently push them back to Belarus, leaving them to endure serious abuses at the hands of the security forces there.

Viewers are also introduced to the activists trying to help the hundreds of people trapped in an inhospitable no man’s land between the two countries, with neither government prepared to offer support.

This is consistent with Holland’s oeuvre which captures many of the darkest moments of the 20th century, including Second World War dramas Angry Harvest, Europa Europa and In Darkness.

She also made Mr. Jones, which tells the story of a journalist who helped expose genocide in Stalin's Soviet Union, and the devastating famine which killed millions there.

Holland added:

“The question of migration is the crucial question of modernity and is certainly right now the hottest political question, which is explored by many governments and many politicians on both sides of the political scene – and it will be as long as it pays off. 

“Unfortunately, the direction we’re heading in is past the point of no return and the migration crisis will change to not only the biggest humanitarian and political crisis of the 21st century but also the most public one. 

“When it came to the Polish borders, I understood how it would be used by the Polish government and that somehow it reflects the global situation in a way which is also cinematographically interesting.

“It was impossible to show the reality in a documentary way because access to the border was forbidden to the media and activists and people with cameras. I decided what I could do was a feature film as close to the reality as possible. 

“I made the films Europa Europa, Angry Harvest, In Darkness and Mr. Jones, films about the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century and the way they were born and touched the lives of innocent people and their children. 

“It’s my duty now to make a film about the contemporary situation when I see the egg of the serpent in front of my eyes.”

Until Tusk’s more centrist coalition won power in 2023, Poland was governed by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which came to power in 2015, something that was seen as symptomatic of a shift towards populism across Europe, along with the election of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

While in power, PiS encouraged a policy of “pushbacks” – forcing migrants to return to the other side of the border – and introduced an exclusion zone in the area, hindering public oversight. And though Tusk’s government is ostensibly more liberal than its predecessor, policies are again drifting right.

During the conference, journalist and activist Joanna Klimowicz provided her own report based on trying to cover the crisis between 2021 and 2024, dealing with restricted access, as well as harassment and abuse from the authorities.

Klimowicz described trying to help Syrian refugees who were on the verge of freezing to death – and how one man who was critically ill with hypothermia was taken from a Polish hospital and returned to Belarus.

As part of her account, Klimowicz also explained how she was part of a search party who discovered the body of a young boy from Ethiopia lying in the woods, partially eaten by wild animals.

And she revealed how a pregnant Kurdish woman and her unborn child had died, their bodies buried in an old Muslim cemetery near the border which has been steadily growing since the beginning of the crisis. 

Speaking through a translator, Klimowicz said:

“It is not fair that it is us who do it, we haven’t been prepared for it, we are civilians, we are ordinary people.

“We haven’t been prepared to see human bodies in a wood where we usually go for a walk or mushroom picking. The state has left us completely alone in this situation. 

“It is often the case that activists or journalists take off their own clothes and give them to people who are soaked and cannot move anymore because we were aware that in an hour we will go back to a warm home and a shower, while a long and perilous journey was ahead of them.

“I believe there is no opposition between being a journalist and an activist… Anyone who has experienced the situation at the borderland would realise that when human health or life is endangered you cannot stay objective and calm. 

“You just forget about your professional role. You just go and help those people to carry their backpack. We just comfort these people and we give them hot tea. 

“First of all, we are human beings and then we have our professional roles as journalists.” 

In Poland, it's impossible to ignore the war in neighbouring Ukraine; Warsaw is around ten hours’ drive from Kyiv and during the conference, jets could be heard passing overhead. At one point, the talks were briefly interrupted by a test of the city’s early warning system. 

The Kremlin has been accused of orchestrating the operation to lure migrants to Belarus – promising a safe and straightforward alternative to crossing the Mediterranean by boat – in a bid to undermine the EU, which has provided support to the Ukrainian military effort. 

And in contrast to the treatment of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, Poland has welcomed an estimated 1.5 million refugees since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A detail not lost on Holland, who chose to conclude Green Border with a scene showing these new arrivals being warmly welcomed. 

Holland and other speakers at the conference expressed disappointment at the coalition government, led by Tusk, which promised a more humanitarian approach, but now seems little different from the previous regime on this issue.

Indeed, a controversial new law allowing border guards to use firearms in self-defence has also been introduced following the death of a 21-year-old soldier who was fatally stabbed at the border.

Adam Balcer, a political scientist and cultural anthropologist from the College of Eastern Europe, said PiS had contributed to a growing radicalisation of mainstream politics in Poland.

He said:

“We were on the verge of collapse into the abyss [under PiS] so this [Tusk’s] coalition, we should recognise they’re a lesser evil despite all shortcomings, serious shortcomings. 

“Of course there’s huge disappointments, we can blame this new government for the process of accepting and spreading ‘soft xenophobia’. Tusk’s election campaign should be described as ‘soft xenophobia’.

“Covid saw the biggest death of Poles since the Second World War, but PiS chose to focus on migration and issues related to Muslims. The current coalition decided to support a soft version of these kinds of ideas.

“They strengthened something which was in the society, this surge of support for ‘pushbacks’, for violating the rule of law and the Polish constitution. The intentional decision of this current government is to play with the politics of fear.

“They can hide behind the society and claim that’s the social mood. But if the mainstream is taking ideas from the radical right and inserting them into the mainstream then I’m afraid at some point we can observe in Poland that authoritarianism is coming back.

“You are starting to hear from right-wing radicals the language that ‘we should defend our environment,  our country, our resources, we need to protect our soil, our resources, national interests, the future of the nation, the next generation’. 

“This kind of discourse you can hear among them… it’s something new and we should pay more attention to this trend.”

On the first day of the October conference, Christopher Newfield, Director of Research at the ISRF, described Poland as “Europe’s fulcrum country”, remarking that it had shown “persistence and rebirth after attempted erasures by more powerful neighbours”.

Fittingly, given Poland’s efforts to move its economy away from a traditional focus on coal, the conference included discussions around how to deal with the climate crisis on a political and economic level, including the potential role of states and markets in limiting catastrophic environmental damage.

The event, hosted in the New Orangery in Warsaw’s Royal Łazienki Park, also debated the question of whether researchers have a particular responsibility to participate in climate activism and civil disobedience.

Discussions followed around the implications of a European Green Deal for Africa and Latin America, displacement of people by state-sponsored corporations – many of which indulge in “greenwashing” – and the role of legal mechanisms in enabling ecological devastation. 

And it was questioned whether it was even possible to address climate change in the face of ongoing armed violence, including conflicts in Ukraine, South Sudan and the Middle East.

Newfield observed that the event came at a time when “war is being normalised”, with the first day of the conference, October 7, falling on “the first anniversary of Hamas’s lethal attack on Israel, to which Israel has responded with a war of annihilation in Gaza”.

But he urged researchers not to give up on the idea of the 2020s as a “decade of progress on climate, migration, and democracy”, and urged them to find ways of contributing to “the reversal of the vicious cycle” which was preventing progress across the conference’s three main themes. 

“The overthrowing of false narratives is a crucial function of scholarship, and it’s one of the implicit aims of the work we fund at the Foundation,” Newfield explained. “Scholarship does succeed at this reframing, throughout history and over time, while usually taking too long in the process. 

“This conference is part of this long-term project of ISRF renarrations of our selected issues to help disseminate better premises and transformed thinking about the present and the future.” 

It is this task of “renarration” which Holland places at the centre of her artistic duty with Green Border, asking her audience what action could possibly be considered as adequate when confronted by the horrors taking place in the heart of Europe.