Shot in stark black and white, the film weaves together the stories of a Syrian refugee family, a young Polish border guard, and a Warsaw activist as they become enmeshed in the manufactured humanitarian crisis on the Belarus-Poland frontier — where the Lukashenko regime has lured asylum seekers as a weapon against Europe. Agnieszka Holland's urgent, unflinching film refuses to let its audience look away from state violence, and was met with controversy in Poland even as it collected the Special Jury Prize at Venice.
