Agnieszka Holland receives Czech Lion for 'Green Border'
An acclaimed Polish director Agnieszka Holland has been awarded a Czech Lion Film Award of the Czech Film and Television Academy (CFTA) for her film 'Green Border' which depicts the plight of migrants on the Polish-Belarusian border.
Holland accepted the award "for an extraordinary accomplishment of the year" at a ceremony held in Prague, Czech Republic, on March 9.
She said at the event that the film was "born out of anger, despair and hope. And in a way it paid off. It travels around the world, opening people's hearts, consciences and consciousness."
"It was probably the most important film of my life," Holland added.
A representative of the Czech film community, former rector of the Prague film school, Ivo Mathe, said that the CFTA supported the filmmakers during the Polish premiere, when "the film and its authors came under pressure from the politicians of the time."
Holland thanked Czech filmmakers for their support when in Poland she was called, as she said, "Hitler, Stalin, Goebbels, Putin, Leni Riefenstahl."
'Green Border', which premiered at last year's Venice Film Festival to great critical acclaim, is a Polish-Belgian-French-Czech co-production. It follows a fictional group of refugees trapped on the border and shows heartless Polish border guards pushing them back into Belarus, apparently indifferent to their suffering.
The film provoked strong reactions from members of the previous Polish government, which made border security a priority in order to avoid a repeat of the 2021 migrant crisis that saw hundreds of people trying to get into Poland from Belarus. (PAP)
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