Metacritic reviews

If cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland’s new film is one precision-tooled specimen.

There has been no shortage of films that deal with Europe’s current refugee crisis over the last decade or so. Still, this picture, with its supremely confident handling of a fractured, fragmented structure and its twin driving forces of compassion and fury, is undoubtedly one of the best.

While you’re still in the vice-like grip of its multilevel narrative it may not feel like it, but a film like Agnieszka Holland’s bruisingly powerful new refugee drama ultimately comes from a place of optimism.

A gripping, visceral human drama that occasionally turns shakycam thriller to excellent effect, it’s a small victory for empathy over coarseness. Like Michael Winterbottom’s prescient 2003 docudrama In This World, it demands that you witness the treatment of refugees with your own eyes.

Holland has made a righteous, masterful work, arguably her best since “Europa Europa,” but it’s not for the faint of heart or those inclined to turn a blind eye to suffering. And again, that’s the point.

Green Border is a powerful and necessary film.

Green Border is a tough watch: a punch to the solar plexus. But a vital bearing of cinematic witness to what is happening in Europe right now.

Its anger is matched by its empathy, both of which abound in its tale of woe set in the nightmarish region between Belarus and Poland.

Its three narratives never fully work together, even as they begin to interlink. Its moments of true emotional poignancy work well, but are all too rare in a film that otherwise has plenty to say.

Hindered by extremely predictable character development and a mosaic-like approach to narrative, making it hard to really get to know and empathise with any of the characters.