Green Border (15)
Directed by Agnieszka Holland
★★★★★

 

 
IN this, worldwide refugee week, comes a timely and powerful yet harrowing immigration drama which takes a fresh look at the migration crisis in Europe as it weighs up the inhumanity refugees face against the compassion. 

Shot in black and white, three-times Oscar-nominated Polish director Agnieszka Holland pulls no punches in this brutally tough-to-watch drama which takes place in the no man’s land between Belarus and Poland. also known as the “green border.”

This narrative fiction explores the issue via the stories of a Syrian family who are heading to Sweden via Poland, Julia (Maja Ostaszewska) a 50-year-old therapist newly turned activist, and Jan (Tomasz Wlosok) a border guard whose wife is expecting their first child.

It examines how refugees are being used as a political weapon by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko as they are lured to the border by promises of an easy passage to the EU in a bid to provoke the latter. Once they cross into Poland they are immediately sent back to Belarus by the border police even if they demand asylum. One refugee reveals how this has happened to him six times. 

The racist border guards, drunk on power, treat the refugees worse than animals. They beat them whether they are young or old and they even hurl a heavily pregnant woman over the barbed wire fence into Belarus which is horrendous to see.

Refugees are dehumanised by the press portraying them as criminals although those who don’t buy into the propaganda are happy to help them.

The film states that since the beginning of the refugee crisis in 2014 around 30,000 people have died crossing various European borders while in spring last year, when this was made, people were still dying at the Polish-Belarusian border.

That nothing has changed and the situation today is, if anything, worse is a sobering thought. 

Out in cinemas June 21.

Fancy Dance (15)
Directed by Erica Tremblay
★★★★

 

 
AFTER her haunting Oscar-nominated performance in Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone returns in a moving family drama about a young indigenous girl and her aunt who go searching for her missing mother. 

Since her sister’s disappearance Jax (Gladstone) has been taking care of her 13-year-old niece Roki (a phenomenal Isabel Deroy-Olson) and barely scraping by on the Senaca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma.

While preparing for Roki’s dance at the upcoming pow-wow, social services swoop in and give custody of Roki to her white grandfather Frank (Shea Whigham). 

The pair run away as they search for Roki’s mum on the way to the pow-wow while the police launch a manhunt for them. 

This slow-burning multilayered drama is an impressive directorial debut feature by Erica Tremblay who also co-wrote and produced it. Gladstone delivers another mesmerising performance as a troubled woman who is at the mercy of a failed justice system, while police authorities do not take seriously the disappearance and murder of Indigenous women.

It is grounded by its detailed and observant depiction of life on the reservation and proves an exciting calling card for Tremblay. 

In select cinemas June 21 and on Apple TV+ from June 28. 
 

 
Before Dawn (15)
Directed by Jordon Prince-Wright
★★★

 

 
NOT to be confused with Richard Linklater’s romantic trilogy, this is in fact an epic retelling of one of Australia’s biggest military victories in World War I. 

It follows Jim Collins (Levi Miller, Pan), who leaves his family-run sheep station in the Australian outback to fight on the western front in a bid to make a difference.

Although the characters are fictional, the film, co-written and directed by Jordon Prince-Wright, is based on real life war diaries. It depicts with great conviction the hardship of life and fighting in the mud-filled trenches in France which slowly grinds down these young soldiers as they are picked off by the Germans. You watch as their hope and determination to defeat the enemy begins to dampen and fizzles out as days turn into weeks, months and years.  

What it fails to give you is any context as to the Australians’ role in World War I, their motivation to join up and their losses, which would have been useful and added another layer to this war film. 

Out in cinemas June 21.

The Exorcism (15)
Directed by Joshua John Miller
★★ 

 

 
RUSSELL CROWE may have found his niche playing Catholic priests as he returns in the wake of The Pope’s Exorcist, this time as an actor portraying a man of the cloth in a supernatural horror film which proves truly disturbing. Basically because it makes so little sense.  

Crowe is captivating as always as a troubled film star battling grief and his own drug- and alcohol-infused demons, plus the trauma of having been abused by a Catholic priest as a young boy, which is hinted at but never explored. He is also trying to re-establish a relationship with his estranged daughter (Ryan Simpkins) as he is slowly becoming possessed by something on the set. 

Cowritten and directed by Joshua John Miller, it is very eerie and full of plenty of jump scares but it poses many more questions than it answers in terms of plot holes.

You ask yourself why Sam Worthington and David Hyde Pierce agreed to appear in such wasted roles and why this film takes itself so seriously. 

Though Crowe never disappoints, he isn’t enough to save or exorcise this film’s many demons. 

Out in cinemas June 21.