Court bans Poland’s justice minister from linking director and her film to Nazi propaganda

A court has issued an injunction banning justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro from likening director Agnieszka Holland and her new film Green Border to Nazi propaganda. Holland is currently suing Ziobro for making such comparisons.

The minister has called the injunction an “assault on freedom of speech” and announced that he will appeal.

The court order – issued yesterday and shared by Holland’s lawyer – bars Ziobro from making public statements, including social media posts, in which Holland and her work are “referenced, juxtaposed or compared…[with] criminal authoritarian regimes from history or the present day (e.g. the Third Reich, Soviet Union, Stalinism, Putinism)”.

The ban was imposed for the duration of a defamation case Holland has brought against the minister for likening her to a Nazi propagandist due to her new film, which depicts mistreatment of asylum seekers at Poland’s border with Belarus.

“In the Third Reich, the Germans produced propaganda films showing Poles as bandits and murderers. Today, they have Agnieszka Holland for that,” wrote Ziobro, before the film had been released. He has since made further comments likening the director’s work to Nazi and communist propaganda.

After Holland announced that she would sue Ziobro unless he retracted his remarks, the minister refused to back down, saying that God’s judgement of his actions was more important than that of any court. Holland’s lawyers are now seeking a court order for Ziobro to apologise and pay 50,000 zloty to charity.

Today, following the publication of the injunction by Holland’s lawyer, the minister called it an “assault on freedom of expression”, announcing that he would appeal.

“According to the court, Agnieszka Holland can compare Polish soldiers and the border guard officers to bandits, sadists and German Nazis,” he said, quoted by broadcaster TVN24. “On the other hand, I cannot respond to her words by standing up for the Polish soldiers and border guard officers who are so horribly challenged and insulted by her.”

Other figures from across Poland’s government have also condemned Green Border as “anti-Polish” and defamatory. The interior ministry last week announced that it would broadcast a special clip in some cinemas before screenings of the film to inform viewers of the “many untruths and distortions” it contains.

However, the film has won praise from critics, in both Poland and abroad, and received the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, where its screening was followed by a 15-minute standing ovation.

Some had tipped the film to be this year’s entry from Poland for best international feature film at the Oscars. But this week the judging committee instead chose The Peasants (Chłopi), which received four votes while Green Border got two.

Afterwards, Holland told the Hollywood Reporter that members of the committee had told her they thought Green Border was a better choice but they feared the government would “punish them if they picked it, by restricting grants or funding for their movies”.

The head of the committee,  Ewa Puszczyńska – the producer of Oscar-winning films Ida and Cold War – insisted, however, that the committee was “independent [and] everyone voted according to their consciences”.

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Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.