‘Forest’: Thessaloniki Review

Dir: Lidia Duda. Poland/Czech Republic. 2024. 84mins.

There is no shortage of films on the subject of the various manifestations of the refugee crisis in Europe, but this thoughtful documentary is both warm-hearted and quietly devastating as it approaches it from the unusually intimate perspective of one family. Asia and Marek moved to the edge of the Bialowieza Forest on Poland’s eastern border with Belarus to raise their three young children, Marysia, Franek and Ignacy, away from the rat race, but discovered trouble in paradise.

Warm-hearted and quietly devastating 

Polish filmmaker Lidia Duda followed the family over two-and-a-half years from August 2021, during which time many refugees, mostly from the Middle East, have found themselves trapped in a Catch 22 scenario. Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko deliberately encouraged them to the border on the promise of access to the European Union, but on arrival they were repeatedly pushed back by Polish border agents, often violently. They have become permanently stuck in a sort of no-man’s land, with locals forbidden to help by law. 

It’s a scenario that has already been brought searingly to the screen by Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, and this documentary feels like a humanistic companion piece. Forest also shares some DNA with recent Sundance World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner A New Kind Of Wilderness – also about an off-the-grid family whose life didn’t turn out as anticipated – and is in competition against it at Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival. Duda’s film offers a combination of family cosiness and hard truths that should see it travel widely on the festival circuit, and could easily pique the interest of distributors.

The idyllic life the family has created for itself is initially in the spotlight, with cinematographer  Zuzanna Zachara-Hassairi unobtrustively capturing the connection to the land. Mist hangs over a field near their house, where a bison grazes, and we see the children happily learning the ropes from their parents, feeding chickens and prizing the lid off a beehive. Marek and his kids also make forays to the forest to check the motion-capture cameras they’ve set up –  as the refugee crisis kicks in, it’s not just roe deer and elk they snap at night but humans who have been forced to try to fend for themselves there.

On one trip out, they find sleeping bags. “I wouldn’t want to sleep here,” one of his children says – a pint-sized perspective on the issue that Duda repeatedly captures as the children, often seen playing together, boil the issues down to basics.

For many, refugees are a distant concept, framed by the media and buffered by political point scoring, but for Marek and Asia they are a living – and, sadly, sometimes dying – issue in their own backyard. Duda builds on juxtapositions. There’s a shift as the tranquil daytime forest becomes a tense place at night, the family breaking the law to offer help to those in need. Later, beautiful footage of a bison captured on one of their cameras takes on a dark perspective as Marek notes it is urinating in one of the only water sources for miles, from which desperate refugees will be tempted to drink.  

Rather than a score, impressive sound work from Krzysztof Ridan and Pavel Rejholec captures everything from bird song to the pounding hooves of running bison that offers a thundry rumble of threat. Their work also brings home the tension and trauma of the night-time missions. Duda protects the refugees’ identities but we don’t need to see their faces to appreciate the suffering. Ragged breathing tells its own story.

The strength and humanism of the family is at the heart of this documentary, but there’s no doubt the situation is taking its toll. As the children play, they talk of rescue missions and border guards. One spins Asia a tale of a supercar that will take refugees directly from Iraq or Syria to Poland, where “they can live a normal life”. Duda also captures Asia and Marek discussing their fears and debating what’s best for their children. The kids themselves think the rules about not helping the refugees are stupid. They cut to the chase as they chat about it in ways that can’t help but make you hopeful about how this situation may be handled by future generations.