With inevitably tragic consequences, they become pawns between guards on both sides of the title’s green border, the dividing line between European Union member Poland and Russia ally Belarus.

Complicity of Silence

The focus then shifts to their compatriots who are trying to help the refugees. Some of these volunteers are doctors or lawyers, but others are activists opposed to the right-wing regime of President Andrzej Duda — people putting their safety at risk.

The action starts a year before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, when migrants from war-torn countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were encouraged by Lukashenko to use Belarus as a gateway to Poland and the EU.

But the people traveling on Turkish plane in the film’s first scene have no idea this was a cruel trick, designed by Belarus to make their EU-member neighbors look like the bad guys when they refuse to extend asylum to the refugees and send them back over the border.

When they get to Belarus, the Syrian family offer to let Leila ride with them to Poland in a taxi paid for by Bashir’s brother (Noah Meskina) in Sweden. But the driver rips them off for more money, which Leila pays, and they make the crossing illegally in the night.

When they’re captured by the Polish border guards, Leila and the Syrians are herded together with refugees from other countries and shipped back to Belarus, the beginning of brutal ordeal.

All are beaten by guards on both sides, and some die by drowning in the marshes, or from exposure, shock, dehydration or starvation.

In one of the film’s most shocking scenes, a pregnant African woman is literally thrown over the border, which inevitably causes miscarriage.

Psychiatrist Julia (Maja Ostaszewska) makes her living by caring for patients, especially after her husband’s recent death. After she helps refugees in a swamp near her house, she is so appalled by how the state treats them that she joins up with a grassroots activists dedicated to bringing healthcare.

The plot is credited to Maciej Pisuk, Gabriela Lazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Holland. The latter also shares her directing credit with Kamila Tarabura and Katarzyna Warzecha.

The drama pulls everything together by the end with a coda set just after war between Ukraine and Russia begins in February 2022.