The fact that good is addictive, and the guilt that is like a worm, with Agnieszka Holland is talking to Angelika Swoboda.
"Green Frontier" is simply a movie about the crisis of humanity?
It's a movie about the temptation of good and the temptation of evil. And how to manage specified temptations present and in today's geopolitical situation.
You have a strong imperative to show the planet around us, and how we find ourselves in it in hard situations of decency, respect, helping others and good. Do I read your intentions correctly?
I think that especially on the corners, and undoubtedly our planet is now at a crossroads and a turn, it is simply a waste of time not to deal with the most crucial things. These questions that we have so much are complicated, and at the same time I think that people of art, intellectuals and above all politicians who can talk to society, capitulated.
The second have only a populist thought to simplify the planet so as to say that these hard questions are actually easy and they have a simple answer to them. And this is, of course, a lie, and this is simply a lie, the consequences of which may simply be inconceivable. Unfortunately, all fuses in the form of fresh ideas or artistic imagination have besides failed a bit, and we, the creators, if we are already starting our imagination, are going into the realm of complete fantasy. Escapist are those who could someway effort to manage this crisis.
That's why you made a movie about the real, poignant events that show it?
I just felt terrible anger, and I knew that erstwhile it started, I had to do something. The feeling that I had to do something was besides due to the fact that I dealt with specified topics from past for most of my creative life. I'm very sensitive, I've seen insignificant symptoms of illness that don't show symptoms yet, and they were disturbing to me.
I felt that I had to do something with tools in the form of my knowledge, sensitivity, any designation and acousticity. If this is happening right next to me and if I can explain it to myself very thoroughly, if I can talk to my friends who are involved, then I will not fly with them to wear dense backpacks and walk in the woods due to the fact that I no longer have that form, but I can make a movie. I realized very rapidly that the feature movie is at this point the tool needed to tell the world.
The paper cannot say this so comprehensively, due to various restrictions, specified as that filmmakers or media were not allowed into the state of emergency. quite a few terrible things,
which took place there, was held in silence. So I thought to gather all the actors of these events—and refugees, and guards, and activists—and to be their voice.
You were based on the relation between the people who were in the mediate of these events. Which was the most moving one?
Plenty. erstwhile I made documentation for my holocaust films, for “Europe, Europe” or “The Bitter Harvest”, of course many years after the war, erstwhile there was already large literature on this subject and testimonies, these testimonies were comparatively small. The survivors wouldn't talk about it. They wanted to live, they all had any terrible trauma. There were no psychologists or therapists, they had to deal with it themselves. frequently this denial was the best way. They were besides ashamed due to the fact that all who survived had shame on those who did not survive, so there were not so many statements, but then they started.
“Europe, Europe” was a very popular movie and I rode with it a lot, stumbling around with the audience around the world. There was always a number of Jews in the area who survived it, or their loved ones survived it, and after each screening, a queue lined up for me, and each of them wanted to tell me his story. They said, “What you shot is amazing, but my story...” I was stupid and I didn't compose it down or evidence it. And you could make a truly large book out of it.
Each of these successive stories revealed incredible layers of drama, tragedy of evil, and sometimes besides good. Something akin is besides erstwhile you perceive to people from the border. Of course, this region is tiny and these events are more repetitive, but each of these stories carries an incredible burden of emotion. Activists are different, but they're all peculiar people. There are those who do it professionally, work in NGOs, have experience and discipline optimistic, know how to defend themselves and how to get
organize. But there are those who have fallen like a stone on their heads and changed their lives completely. On the 1 hand, sometimes it completely destroyed them, and on the another hand it gave him any extraordinary eschatological sense, which they did not expect. abruptly they became angels. Of course, it's addictive, and any people get active in it so that others fear for their intellectual health. However, these are remarkable stories.
Portrait by Artur Krynicki Do they conclude that this microworld is made up of good people and bad people?
I think there are very fewer people who are clearly good and clearly bad. Most have possible and good and bad inside, and they balance out there somewhere. any have more good, others have more evil, it depends on culture, education, religion. The function of politicians is to trigger these potentials. Unfortunately, politicians, especially in fresh times, have realized that it is much easier to trigger the possible of evil. And that is much more profitable to them, due to the fact that it is easier to manipulate these people later, even with fear or false satisfaction.
But as well in the same people, the possible of good could be activated in a sense, we see it, comparing the behaviour of the same guards on the Belarusian border and on the Ukrainian border,
Right? They're not another people, they're the same people. Apart from this majority, there is simply a promil or percent of psychopaths and any percent of righteous people who, regardless of what the threat is and what their interests or motivations are, must respond erstwhile they face harm, misery or injustice.
And they, in my opinion, are saving our world. A planet of values. If they weren't there, it'd be very easy to corrupt everyone.
I'd include you in a fair group. What do you say?
I don't think I deserve this. I haven't saved anyone's life yet. On the another hand, my mother, who is the Righteous Among the planet Nations and has a tree in Jerusalem, saved respective concrete human lives. Together with 2 friends as an 18-year-old. I didn't save anyone, but I'm definitely a brave person.
Courage is inherent in good, isn't it? I inactive have a image of you standing in front of the Presidential Palace other a group of police officers.
It was the eve of another period erstwhile the closing of the city and restrictions on passers-by took on any monstrous sizes. First, I tried to talk to the police officers who were standing there, and they wouldn't let the disabled in the wheelchair. A man lived nearby, and he had to drive around about a mile or more of this cart. These policemen were telling me something, and then their commander came and told them to back off. I thought I wouldn't let it go, and I stood there for half an hour. It was interesting to stand there and watch what they thought. Then came a group of Polish citizens and photographer Marta Bogdanowicz photographed me and this image became viral. I thought it would take a talent to be in a good place and to have a photographer there. But I didn't attach any crazy importance to it due to the fact that it wasn't comparable to that young Chinese guy standing in Tiananmen Square other the tank. I don't know if I'm standing in front of a tank. possibly in a situation of crazy determination, yes, but mostly I'm not that brave to go under tanks. I was when
I was very young, but then I grew up, and I had a baby. I think there are different forms of courage. It doesn't always should be as provocative as mine. There may besides be specified a quiet, everyday courage. It was in Podlasie that I met respective specified people among local activists who are very calm, average and incredibly brave, but at the same time this happens unostentatiously, between nursing and cooking milk. specified mediocre courage inspires my top admiration. In courage or altruism there can be a certain dose of narcissism, right?
Clearly, doing good is rewarding.
It was perfectly visible erstwhile Poles united in the first period of the war in Ukraine. abruptly they proved so effective in helping and so generous. It's been a long time since I've seen it, and I most likely won't see it like this for long.
happy Poles. Of course, it was a bit narcissistic, but yet beautiful. So you can see that there's a possible for good in us, and if you don't throw this lock under your feet, it can happen.
So not throwing the good stuff at your feet is simply a kind of good, too?
I'm certain it's little evil, due to the fact that the good thing is active action. But in our situation, not disturbing
It's a lot.
But goodness and comfort do not go hand in hand.
You know, we're just people. Only peculiar individuals that almost scare us, any saints, are good 7 by 7 and twenty-four by twenty-four. erstwhile the war broke out in Ukraine, we made available to Ukrainians a cottage in Mazury and an flat in Warsaw. We have a wonderful, beautiful household with 2 children, a grandma and a dog. I full understood their state of mind, due to the fact that I had the same feeling erstwhile abruptly I was in Paris with 1 suitcase. I was just abroad erstwhile Wojciech Jaruzelski introduced martial law in Poland. Is that the feeling of coming back? Not coming back? What to do, where to go? They were all in a terrible disco, but I didn't live in the same flat with any of them. But my friends stayed with individual for months and realized
How hard it is for yourself. I besides realized erstwhile I was filming the “Golden Harvest”, what large effort it must have been to hide a hebrew or a hebrew during the occupation. individual put himself and his household at hazard of death, while at the same time putting up with all the physiological inconveniences, sicknesses, moods and resentments, and all that's bothering the man you help. specified a man is only for a minute grateful, then he becomes angry that he is the 1 to be helped. I'm saying this due to the fact that good isn't just candy. Sometimes it turns into irritation and the desire to escape to have its planet to itself, alternatively than constantly sharing it with others. Doing good requires large effort.
Where's the limit? And does it have any boundaries?
I don't think there is. It can be said that death is the limit of good, but as a man is simply a believer, even she is not that limit. I think that good is not to be spared, it is besides resurgent, good is good. Refugees were then recorded, I saw any of those recordings. They were a terrible beating.
Grief and disappointment. I will never forget 1 of them who said, “There is no humanity on this border.” It touched me terribly. A group of young Africans, very intelligent, who spoke beautifully French, was so full of bitterness and hatred towards Polish services and Belarusians too. They met with force and on 1 side and on the other. I thought to myself: if there were no specified activists, the reception of humanity or the deficiency of humanity by these refugees would be completely unambiguous. In a sense, these activists besides saved them from despairing nihilism.
They besides saved us a small from reasoning there was only evil.
When young people come with fear and hope, a certain vitality and a certain belief that Europe is wonderful, and encounters a selfless cruelty that they do not understand, they do not combine it with any Putin or Lukashenko. What do they care? They just want to survive, and if they experience something like this, their imagination of Europe and the white man must be very bad. These are consequently movements like butterfly wings. Somewhere out of this despair a terrorist is born. A terrorist is not born for good, a terrorist is born for good.
harm. He believes that the environment is bad and that he must fight his place, not that
can accomplish them through cooperation.
When we talk about the humanitarian crisis, we cannot ignore the themes of truth, lies or misinformation.
We live in a planet where everyone can be informed of what happens if they want to. But there is simply a question of confronting the fact that is not simple. In turn, the situation of activists, apart from taking risks and large intellectual and physical effort, is in a way
Simple. They know they're doing something good. They see a man sick or hungry and they know that he needs to be fed and treated due to the fact that that man could die. So they decide to aid him, and their doubts can only concern any repercussions from the authorities. But the geopolitical viewpoint is different. Liberals in the European Union, after 2015 experience, think: yes, we have allowed a fewer million refugees, immediately benefited from populist and fascist parties, there has been disintegration, and that is why Putin's government is manipulating the movement of refugees, and if we do not defend ourselves against it, we will not keep European cohesion. This is simply a immense price we cannot pay and we must find ways to keep refugees distant from our borders. Of course, these methods are not only horrible but besides ineffective. I don't know if there's been any investigation done, but individual told me that there was, but I didn't find them, did the degree of cruelty at European borders halt or reduce the stream of refugees? I don't think so. It depends on the minute and how large their determination is.
How much fear is an excuse to refrain from doing good?
Who am I to justice someone's fear? People are frightened and have reason to be. They have it printed in DNA, they have their experiences or experiences of erstwhile generations, and they have imagination. In the case of refugees, people fear something very specific, that is, dealing with others, that they will be taken distant from their space, their lifestyle, their wealth or their peace. These are average fears. individual or a politician, or another man to justice them, would just be silly. At least any spiritual leader can do it, but I don't feel so powerful.
Do you feel like a good person?
Basically, yes, which does not mean that I could not uncertainty in certain situations from fear or laziness or indifference.
In situations of doubt, you say this to yourself: remember, Agnieszka, do you should be good, brave and you can't back out?
I don't talk to myself like that, and I effort to be good to myself, all the more so I was raised like this. My parent actively urged me to do good, specified as sharing my favourite toys with poorer or sicker children. She said, “Agnies, be generous.” Some
So I can say that it's deep inside me, but on the another hand, I'm defending myself against imposing a strategy of values by individual or myself. But it's easier for me to share with individual than not to share. And there's most likely a small bit of comfort in it, and then I might think,
"Damn, I've turned individual down for 5 zlotys, or why, exactly?".
Did your parents set an example in your life?
My father was a man very wounded by the war and the Holocaust, which I only realized as an adult erstwhile he was long gone. Rather, he stimulated me intellectually and artistically. My mother, on the another hand, helped everyone, was specified a actual kid of Żeromski, a strong woman. I'm certain it must have influenced me, that she wasn't just talking, but she did it all the time. Sometimes, of course, it was annoying due to the fact that I thought it was giving itself or its space besides much. We had individual surviving with us all the time, any mediocre country girl, any homeless lady, any woman who was depressed. There was no privacy, there was always individual at home, and you had to aid him.
Today you grin at that memory, you are no longer annoyed.
I loved Mom very much, and I forgave her. And I besides admired her very much, but I didn't want it to get all over my head.
What did your parent do?
Mom was a journalist, editor-in-chief of the magazine for agrarian youth “New Village”. She wore them and led them, then they threw her out for the AK, but then they accepted them again and in 1968 they threw them out again. It was a magazine of large social importance. The largest department in it was the letter department, which kept in contact with readers and established libraries and clubs. Mom was inactive on the delegation, sometimes I pretended to.
To go with her. In this way, erstwhile she was traveling around the People's University, she became friends with Olga Tokarczuk's parents. Olga and I met very well.
You wanted to be as good as your mom?
I think I admired her, and I felt a small fragile. My parents' breakup looked bad and I realized very early that I had to take care of them a little, that they were helpless in various emotional situations. At the same time, Mom was very strong. Then I realized that this full generation was so torn up by the war... They seemed to have a fast reaction, a vitality, dancing.
And they had fun till morning, and at the same time, that trauma was never overworked. This was evident erstwhile they began to grow old and dealt with reality only superficially, and underneath there was any deep distrust.
Trauma can besides be doing good, right?
Helping the border is very traumatic. Professional groups, specified as Borders, know how to defend themselves from it. They have psychotherapist help, on-calls, and vacations so they don't do it all the time. Besides, they talk about problems together. Those who form unprofessional groups, sometimes after these 2 years they can't stand, they get off completely, they gotta halt doing it, but they can't. They're afraid that they won't be able to sleep at all due to the fact that they're gonna keep reasoning that someone's waiting for them in the woods. These are very hard situations, and I think any people should stop, at least for a long time,
Or they might pay the highest price.
Because they're addicted to helping?
How can you usually look at the world, go out for ice cream, if you know that a man can die close here if I don't come to him? And the satisfaction of being saved is incomparable with no other.
It is besides good to see those who feel that satisfaction. I'm certain you've met people whose welfare is clogged.
Among the people I met on the border with 2 co-directors of the movie Green Border and the operator, there were respective specified people. I'm not going to tell you precisely what they did due to the fact that I shouldn't, but I thought to myself, what a beautiful man and how wonderful that there are specified people. I felt admiration and tenderness.
An example of good is appealing. Of course, not all are able to make them according to specified advanced standards as these activists, but this is an example that is possible and effective. You see a man who
He looks like he's dying, and erstwhile you give him an IV and something to drink, and you change him into dry clothes, he abruptly becomes another man and thanks for your help. It's very satisfying.
And beautiful. I know I wouldn't do well at the border. So what good could I do for others?
With respect to helping migrants and refugees, there are inactive major financial needs. There's a group of women dealing with those who are in abroad safety facilities. I intervened there on respective people who had been held above all law for a year and a half, any of whom attempted suicide or starvation. These women are helping them.
The minute they're released and waiting for any decisions. They besides aid them integrate. These are young, cool boys who want to live well. And since they have besides met good people, Poland seems to them to be a country where you can live. You can aid refugees volunteer or
Financial. I, since I have a dog, have mostly been getting messages about another expelled dogs to
Adoption. Animals can be helped, too.
Can you tell me about your dog?
He's a hard dog, anxious and reactive. He's 2.5 years old, and it goes on, but very slowly. He's easy to get off balance, he can be aggressive, and he's a very smart and delicate dog. He's a tiny mutt, his name is Berek. He came to me as a puppy – my daughter and her friend took him for
me from the temporary home – he was previously found in a shed in Bieszczady with another puppies and a freezing mother. Well, that wasn't precisely smart, due to the fact that now I'm worried if something happens to me, what happens to him? Anyway, Berek teaches me patience and gives me quite a few joy. He had a separation fear, he couldn't be left alone, but we're working on it, and now I can leave him for a fewer hours. Berek's lucky, due to the fact that if he were to find individual else, he'd most likely be mediocre by now.
He'd be sitting back in a cage in a shelter.
In summing up, is good paying off?
I think so. Good people are healthier. What is most destructive to man is guilt. Even if he doesn't admit it, guilt is like a worm that sits somewhere in the soul or in the body and eats. Those who don't have this worm, I'm certain you're better off still.
AGENT HOLLAND – movie and theatre director, movie and theatre screenwriter. She graduated from the faculty of directing at the movie and tv Department of the Academy of phase Arts in Prague. She began her career in Poland, where she worked alongside Krzysztof Zanussi and then as a screenwriter at films, among others, Andrzej Wajda. In years she emigrated to Paris. While performing films in France and Germany, and later mainly in the United States, she became celebrated for her works specified as “The Bitter Harvest” (1985, nominated for an Oscar for a non-English film) or “Europe, Europe” (1990, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Scenario) about the Holocaust of Jews, as well as little political dramas like “Olivier, Olivier” (1991) or “The Washington Square” (1997). Since 2007 she has re-recorded films in Poland, where her next 2 works: “In Darkness” (2011, nominated for an Oscar for a non-English-language film) and “Citizen Jones” (2019), received Golden Lions at the Polish movie Festival. 1 of Holland's subsequent films – “Green Border” (2023) won the peculiar Jury Award at the Venice global movie Festival. Since December 2020, she has been president of the European movie Academy.
