Agnieszka Holland

Agnieszka Holland (1948) is a Polish film and television director and screenwriter, renowned for her political contributions to Polish cinema. She gained international recognition with her 1989 film Europa Europa, which tells the story of a Jewish teenager who joins the Hitler Youth to escape captivity. This narrative exemplifies what makes all her films so powerful: portraying people as they truly are, with profound flaws and shortcomings, yet also with fundamental and extraordinary capacities for goodness. Her most recent film, Green Border (2023), tells the story of Poles living near the Belarusian border who assist African migrants trying to enter Europe. The film faced criticism from the Polish government—the then-president labelled viewers of the film as traitors—yet millions of Poles bought tickets as a civic act of solidarity. Holland’s commitment to freedom, humanity, and artistic expression makes her a beacon of hope in challenging times.

For decades, Agnieszka Holland has been a leading figure in Polish and European cinema. Many of her films have been nominated for and won major awards. Her work consistently reflects her political activism, intellectual and artistic freedom, humanism, and social justice. By giving refugees a human face in Green Border, she was declared persona non grata by the populist Polish government, received daily death threats, and required bodyguard protection. This underscores the cost of defending artistic freedom and human values—and the courage required to continue doing so. Holland studied film in Prague in the spring of 1968 and was imprisoned for supporting dissidents. Under communist rule in Poland, she courageously voiced criticism of the regime and oppression through her films. She also clandestinely translated Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being into Polish at a time when Kundera could only publish abroad, and his books had to be smuggled into communist countries.

According to Holland, we live in a world where courage is both invaluable and increasingly rare, particularly among politicians. In her latest film Green Border, she exposes the issues surrounding migration and how hopeless and powerless Europe appears when confronted with intellectual and political honesty on this subject. The film—and the reality it portrays—is about human beings suffering yet striving to live in safety and dignity. “Europe’s response should be to dismantle Fortress Europe, hatred, and racism. Instead, we are governed by fear of populism and far-right politicians.”

She directed Europa Europa in 1989, the year of the great changes and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe was a dream for the Poles, just as it is now for Ukrainians: the cradle of democracy, freedom, human rights, equality, and social justice—but also the cradle of some of the most horrific crimes against humanity in the first half of the 20th century. According to Holland, such atrocities could happen again as the “vaccine” against racism and nationalism weakens and immunity fades. “Journalism has become subordinate to political agendas. Investigative work and facts are threatened economically by the internet and AI, and content-wise by populism and polarization.” In Poland, conservatives brought public media under government control, turning them into a mouthpiece for hate-filled propaganda against opposition groups, migrants, LGBTQ+ people, minorities, Germans, and the EU. “The propaganda addicted viewers to hatred. When the liberal party later won elections and state media reported more objectively, they lost a million viewers. They suffered withdrawal symptoms because the hate drug was removed. They need the hate, the propaganda,” Holland observes. “They want to believe the enemy is among them.” Similar dynamics exist in the U.S., and have contributed to Brexit, developments in Hungary and Slovakia, and will likely appear in other countries. “It’s like a virus spreading, making us incapable of seeing problems or devising solutions. Belief in positive collaboration is difficult. Fake news and propaganda are indistinguishable from facts. Facts no longer matter.”

Holland was heartened by the positive reception of Green Border. In Bordeaux, a young girl asked if films could change the world. Holland replied that one cannot change the world. The girl responded, “Maybe you cannot change the world, but you have changed my world.”

Sources: Acceptance Speech 2024, VUB Today, VUB YouTube Channel.