2023-10-21 21:51:59
Updated Saturday, October 21, 2023 – 21:51
The great lady of European cinema is happy that the polls have removed from power in Poland the ultra-conservative executive who began a brutal campaign against her and against her latest film, ‘Green Border’, branded as unpatriotic.
Agnieszka Holland (Varsovia, 1948) She has spent her entire life obsessed with Europe, in the best and most universal sense. And in the most tragic and most liberating as well. Her parents suffered the very bitter consequences of fighting the Stalinist regime and she was almost stoned for daring in the superb film ‘Europe, Europe’ (1991) to imagine the existence of a Holocaust survivor as if she were a mule from Voltaire’s Candide. would try The mere idea of ironizing the greatest of tragedies turned the initial blisters into simple raw flesh. Now, she has done it again. ‘Green Border’, winner of the Special Jury Prize in Venice, she exposes the brutal actions of her country (and by contagion of all of Europe) with the emigrants converted into pawns in a geostrategic game.
We are on the border between Poland and Belarus. Syrians and Afghans go there attracted by the propaganda of Alexander Lukashenko which promises safe passage to Europe. When they arrive, they will soon realize that they are just merchandise. The army on one side facilitates their passage to the other so that the police of the supposed host country can immediately return them to the starting point. And so, over and over again.
Everything narrated, the director insists, is the reflection of a real testimony. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, president of the ultraconservative Law and Justice party (PiS), described the film as “unpatriotic” and added the adjectives “shameful and repulsive.” The then Polish Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro, one step further, compared it to “Nazi propaganda.” And the government created some advertisements “with the official version” to be shown before each session. As a result of all this, Agnieszka Holland was forced to hire security due to the avalanche of death threats. Now, the film is a success in Poland and the opposition has won the elections. “I’ll settle for the truth reaching a couple of people,” says Holland, lounging on a sofa in a central Valladolid hotel. La Seminci began Saturday with a clearly happy director.
In Venice I commented that the Holocaust has ceased to be that ever-present reference… Yes, that is, it has ceased to be a vaccine against atrocity. We see how racism and nationalism rise above a society based on faith, stigmatization and dehumanization of the other. An enemy is created for the simple reason that he is different. And that is the typical Nazi tool that still works, that we have been unable to block. We see it in populist governments and everywhere. Maybe also in Israel, although here the problem is much more complex and I would not like to simplify. But the basics are there: the inability to live with someone who is objectified. Do you dare to give an explanation? It seems evident that people are afraid of the future. We no longer believe in the future. And that shows in the demographics. Young people don’t want to have children. I don’t know what it will be like in Spain, but in Italy or Poland, the demographics are completely at rock bottom. In 20 years, most people will be over 60. So Europe is shrinking and that is the consequence of a lack of confidence that the future makes sense. And, of course, to that we must add what comes from outside: immigration or the climate catastrophe. None of this has an easy solution and that makes people even more afraid and more exclusive. Only those who propose magical formulas are listened to. And all populists or fascists have the solution. But of course, it is not a solution for everyone. For this plan to work, a part of humanity must necessarily be the enemy. Everything is based on the illusion that if we remove or destroy or do not give rights to the undesirables, to those who are not like us, we will be saved. So what is left? Good sense. Nobody knows how to solve either the problem of climate change or the conflict between Hamas and Israel. The only way to do this is by collaborating and recognizing the other as an interlocutor. It is a path that requires patience and does not guarantee solutions. But it is the only sensible and civilized option. Would you say that Poland has entered that path with the victory of the opposition? In Poland the situation is clear. They lost and lost with a spectacular percentage and against everything predictable. They had the resources, the money and the means of communication. They had everything to make a defeat unimaginable. But the young people went to vote and rejected the politics of hate and fear. Think that the brainwashing to which the population has been subjected has been devastating. People’s heads have been filled with filth. There are many who believe that Donald Tusk [lder de la Coalicin Cvica] It’s German. They are convinced that he speaks German at home and that he sold half of Poland to Angela Merkel and the other half to Putin. It is this type of wild contamination that has been defeated. Do you feel safer now? Happier. They created such an intense campaign against me from every conceivable angle that I ended up receiving all kinds of threats. I was a Nazi, I was Stalin, I was an enemy of the State, I was going to destroy Poland… The hysteria reached such a point that, in truth, they were provoking some madman to attack me. Hate is impossible to control. ‘Green Border’ talks about borders and is itself in the middle of many things: between reality and fiction, between the present and the living memory of the past… That was the idea. But it was nothing provoked or invented, anyone who approached the forest that separates Poland from Belarus had the impression that it was a return to the past. The silent trauma of the Holocaust is very present in that area. When the refugee crisis began, many people who live there and who are heirs of direct witnesses believed they were living through the episodes of World War II again. The memory returned intact in the thin faces and the illuminated eyes hidden in the barns. And isn’t it devastating to return to the same thing over and over again? I was raised in existentialist philosophy and I have very much in mind the myth of Sisyphus as theorized by Albert Camus. No drama. The human being is ace, but that does not mean that we have to give up. Europe is his great subject. Do you think it has failed as a project? When people asked me some time ago why the film Europe, Europe was called that, with the repeated title, I always insisted that Europe has this duality: it is at the same time the cradle of civilization, culture and democracy, and the person responsible for the greatest crime against humanity. Well, we return to that crossroads. I see clearly that if we don’t change something, if we don’t wake up, we will commit those same crimes against humanity. We are capable of annihilating anyone to maintain our comfort zone. There are many immigrants and they will not stop coming. But hey, it’s going to allow me at least two weeks to have the luxury of being happy after what happened in the elections.#Agnieszka #Holland #Holocaust #longer #vaccine #atrocity