It all begins with a knock - which, in a Polish border town, could be a friend seeking warmth or the authorities seeking deportees. Zvika Gregory Portnoy and Zuzanna Solakiewicz’s documentary 'The Guest' follows Maciek, a local who takes in 27-year-old Syrian refugee Alhyder as he flees both freezing weather and police patrols. Since 2021, the region has militarised after Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko, in a move that screams 'purely political,' turned the Belarusian border into a new EU migration route. Poland retaliated by creating a 3-km zone where refugees are seized and shipped back to Belarus. With humanitarian organisations banned from the area, asylum seekers have become pawns in a war game where the stakes are their lives.
The film zooms in on the tense daily grind: Alhyder struggles to contact his fellow refugees while Maciek keeps an eye out for the military presence lurking in every corner. But it also expands to highlight a network of good samaritans who smuggle food, warm clothes, and translation services to those hiding in the forests. These acts of compassion are a heartwarming flashlight in the dark, proving that even when governments treat human lives like chess pieces, some people still refuse to play the game.