Polish president to face court accused of insulting citizens of own country

In an unprecedented case, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda is to face court after being sued for insulting citizens of his own country.

The incident in question occurred last year, when Duda criticised Green Border – a controversial film by Agnieszka Holland focusing on the migration crisis on Poland’s border with Belarus – and quoted a statement suggesting that those who went to the cinema to watch it are “swine”.

On Saturday, the Centre for Monitoring Racist and Xenophobic Behavior (OMZRiK), the NGO that brought the case against the president, announced that a court hearing has been set for 24 October 2025 (by which time Duda will have left office). It noted that proceedings would be held online, with anyone able to watch the broadcast.

The following day, the head of Duda’s chancellery, Małgorzata Paprocka, confirmed to the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that the hearing would take place on that date. She added that the president would be represented by a legal proxy.

The case stems from the controversy surrounding Green Border, which offers a fictionalised account of the crisis at the Belarus border, where tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers – mainly from Africa, Asia and the Middle East – have sought to cross since 2021 with the help of the Belarusian authorities.

The film – which premiered in Poland in September 2023 – won critical acclaim for Holland at both home and abroad. Just yesterday, it won the best film award at the Gdynia Film Festival, where it also received the audience award. Last year, it received the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival.

However, Green Border was upon its release strongly criticised by the Polish political right, which claimed that it offered an inaccurate portrayal of events with the aim of maligning border officers and romanticising the image of migrants seeking to illegally – and sometimes aggressively – cross into Poland.

The film was strongly opposed by the then national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government, which broadcast a special clip in cinemas before some screenings to inform viewers of the “many untruths and distortions” it contains. The then justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, likened the film to Nazi propaganda.

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Among the critics was Poland’s PiS-aligned president. “I am sorry that such a film has been made, which – as I have heard, because I have not seen the film – denigrates Polish officers,” said Duda at the time in an interview with state broadcaster TVP.

“I am not surprised that border guard officers who saw this film used this slogan known to us from the Nazi occupation, when Nazi propaganda films were shown in our cinemas: ‘only swine sit in the cinema’,” added the president.

That phrase – tylko świnie siedzą w kinie – rhymes in Polish and was used to criticise fellow Poles who willingly watched Nazi propaganda in cinemas during the German-Nazi occupation of World War Two.

OMZRiK says that it sued Duda “for insulting citizens of his own country” with those words. “We want Andrzej Duda to go down in history as the first president brought to court by Poles,” they added.

When OMZRiK launched its case last year, it announced that it was demanding that the president apologise for his remarks.

“There is no doubt that Andrzej Duda, with the statement ‘Only swine sit in the cinema’, offended the group of people who had seen [the] film,” they wrote in the lawsuit.

However, speaking to broadcaster TVN after the controversy over his remarks, Duda said he had not himself called such people “swine” but had just “quoted a statement by representatives of the border guard and said that I was not surprised if what they were saying was true”.

Holland herself also last year personally sued Ziobro for likening her film to Nazi propaganda. However, since then no further developments in the case have been announced.

Main image credit: Przeymysław Keler/KPRP

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.