It is 10 p.m. in Berlin and Polish director Agnieszka Holland, just back from a long day on the set to take part in a Zoom interview, is too exhausted to care that she’s inadvertently sitting in front of a cut-out of Mary Poppins, of all people, in her Hollywood-themed hotel room.

Holland is visibly tired, and no wonder, given the tight production schedule on her still-shooting feature, “Franz,” which she calls “kind of an experimental biography of Franz Kafka — fragments to touch the mystery.” But the longer she talks about her extraordinary latest film, “Green Border,” set to open Friday in Los Angeles, the more her passion for the project takes over and the fatigue almost magically fades away.

A stunning refugee story, “Green Border” is both an extension of frequent themes for the writer-director (whose credits range from 1990’s “Europa Europa,” the best known of her trio of Oscar nominations, to three episodes of HBO’s landmark “The Wire”) and something that feels completely new. It also proved to be controversial even for Holland, calling forth a level of hostility in her native land that the 75-year-old filmmaker said was without parallel in her decades-long experience of uncompromising work.

“It created a lot of hate in Poland coming from the Polish government,” she remembers. “In my quite long life I’ve had very difficult experiences, but the hate campaign coming from officials was unprecedented. It was unpleasant for me, I had a lot of threats,” so much so that she found it necessary to employ full-time bodyguards.

The criticism started at the top, from Jaroslaw Karczynski, head of Poland’s then-ruling Law and Justice Party, who in 2023 called the film “shameful, repulsive and disgusting.” Top Polish ministers labeled “Green Border” “intellectually dishonest and morally shameful,” compared it to Nazi propaganda films and Holland to top Third Reich functionary Joseph Goebbels, and in one case concluded that the director had forfeited the right to call herself Polish.

The government went further, denying “Green Border” a best international film Oscar entry, and mandating that theaters precede their showings of the film with a two-minute short putting forth the official point of view. “The government made some propaganda clips, showing how wonderful the Polish state was,” Holland relates. “Some cinema owners refused to show it, which was very courageous, and one government-supported cinema that had been blackmailed into showing it said, ‘We will show it, but with a caption saying all money from the showing will be given to activist groups.’”

Ironically, Holland says of the threats, “though it was unpleasant for me, they were so violent, so aggressive, by the end they overdid it and helped the movie at the box office,” making “Green Border” one of the year’s top grossers in Poland. “And afterwards, I never had such long and important discussions with the audience, people staying for hours after the screening. Our courage to speak openly gave courage to many people. It was very touching to see this.”

The film behind the fuss, winner of a special jury prize in Venice, is closely based on a real-life situation that is, appropriately enough, uncannily Kafkaesque. Starting in 2021, Aleksandr Lukashenko, longtime ruler of Poland’s neighbor Belarus and close ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, made it surprisingly easy for Middle East refugees to fly to his country. Once they arrived, they were taken straight to the border and literally pushed into Poland.

Except it wasn’t the Poland they might have expected. It was the Green Border, a heavily forested area described by the New York Times as “a two-mile-wide exclusion zone around the border” which featured “a 116-mile-long, 18-foot-high barbed wire fence” that was heavily patrolled by numerous Polish border guards. They rounded up the refugees and pushed them back into Belarus, from which they were pushed back into Poland. This back and forth and back was repeated, sometimes ad infinitum, with beatings, robberies and deaths thrown into the mix.

“The past which was never healed is frankly still present,” says Holland, photographed at New York’s Film Forum in June.

(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)

Holland, who is deeply versed in the dynamics of the situation, says things began with the Syrian civil war of 2015. “Europe is deadly afraid of the arrival of people where the color of the skin, the religion and culture are different,” she says. “And that was immediately used by populist right-wing governments to create an atmosphere of fear and danger.”

Lukashenko (with Putin’s likely support) opted to make things worse, opening that corridor for refugees “to destabilize Poland and Europe, to prove that the Europe of democracy and human rights is bull—,” the director continues.

Moreover, Holland relates, “the Polish government forbade access to humanitarian organizations and all media. That meant it was not only impossible to help these people lost in the forest but also to document the cruelty of the border guards.

“Karczynski, the main political force in Poland, said something that was relevatory to me. ‘Americans lost the war in Vietnam when they allowed the media to go there and send back pictures of children burnt by napalm. We will not allow images to go out.’ So I felt it’s my responsibility to try to tell that story while it was still going on.”

Not only that, Holland was determined “to tell the story from the human perspective. It’s important to me, the feeling of reality.” Holland and her two co-screenwriters, Gabriela Lazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, “spent hours and hours talking to different people. We finally succeeded to speak secretly to border guards, so they could share their experience, their point of view.”

Because of the controversial nature of the film, the aspect of it which took the longest was the raising of funds, which took an entire year and even included money from an American producer, Fred Bernstein. “Green Border” ended up being a Polish-French-Czech-Belgian co-production, and Holland, who for the first time served as a producer as well, said the experience gave her a renewed appreciation of the complexity of European film production.

A scene from the movie “Green Border.”

(Agata Kubis)

The resulting movie tells the story from the vantage point of three distinct groups. Introduced first is a family of refugees from Syria, hoping to eventually join a relative in Sweden. Then there is a Polish border guard who wants to be doing the right thing but is not sure what that is. Finally there is a therapist who gradually takes on an activist role in her border town. Adding to the drama is a coda showing how Poland’s reaction changed when it faced another influx of refugees, this time from racially similar Catholic Ukraine.

Because Holland was so concerned about verisimilitude, she took special care with the casting. “The actors were professional actors but also real Syrian refugees,” she explains. “They did not have to imagine how the Syrians felt, they knew what it meant.” And for the local activist, Holland chose Polish actress Maja Ostaszewska, who in her off-screen life “was helping at the border with human rights activities.”

Shot in only 24 days in luminous black and white by cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk, “Green Border” teems with urgency and immediacy. “It was a very special kind of work, very collective,” Holland recalls. “Some days we worked with two parallel units, with two young Polish women as directors. We did it in secret from the Polish government but we found a unity.”

Besides her “Europa Europa,” Holland has made several films dealing with Holocaust scenarios, and she admits to at one time believing that “the experience of the Holocaust, the horror humanity faced in seeing themselves capable of such things, created some kind of a vaccine against nationalism. But since Sept. 11, the vaccine doesn’t work anymore, that immunity evaporated. Slowly old habits, old demons are coming back.”

Adding to that feeling for Holland is the coincidence that the Green Border area is quite close to the former location of Sobibor, a World War II German death camp that was the site of a famous prisoner rebellion and escape. “When they escaped, the people from that camp looked exactly like these refugees did,” she notes, “and they escaped exactly to that forest.”

The possibility of the world backsliding to a horrific past is very much on the mind of both “Green Border” and its director. “It’s like when a tooth is sick, it gets worse and worse,” she explains. “If you don’t treat it early enough you are going to lose it. The past which was never healed is frankly still present.”

3/5 stars

The fate of the universe does not always need to hang in the balance to create compelling drama. Sometimes, something as simple as garnering a better understanding of a colleague can prove sufficient, as is the case in Sho Miyake’s new drama.

Adapted from Maiko Seo’s novel of the same name, All the Long Nights follows two young people whose prospects in the adult world have been cut short by disorders that affect their everyday experience.

Misa (Mone Kamishiraishi) suffers from extreme premenstrual syndrome, which triggers mood swings so violent that she was forced to quit her previous office job.

Meanwhile, Takatoshi (Hokuto Matsumura) is hobbled by debilitating panic attacks, which have had a similarly negative impact on his professional aspirations.

These two lonely souls meet when Misa moves back home to be close to her ailing mother (Ryo), and gets an administrative job at a small company that distributes science equipment for children.

Initially, Misa and Takatoshi have little in common, their eccentricities and peccadillos even causing a degree of tension and irritation between them.

But when Misa discovers that Takatoshi takes the same herbal medication as she does, it sparks a growing understanding and empathy between the two of them, which only grows when they team up to collaborate on a planetarium project.

Miyake’s film conjures an affectionate portrayal of sleepy suburbia, exemplified by the low-stakes challenges of small-business office culture that unfolds at a gentle, unhurried pace, as one has come to expect from Japanese dramas of this ilk.

Where this film differs from many of its contemporaries, however, is in the absence of such archetypal clichés as romance or illness. Misa and Takatoshi’s relationship remains defiantly platonic throughout, with neither party ever threatening to overstep their boundaries or behave inappropriately.

Instead of a story about finding a kindred spirit with whom to explore the boundless expanse of the universe, All the Long Nights is a tale of curiosity and understanding.

Both characters strive to learn more about their colleague’s physiological disorder to better inform themselves, but also so that they might become a more valuable and empathetic friend to the other.

The performances are understated but also effective, unburdened by the need to resort to histrionics to advance the narrative.

Undeniably, Misa and Takatoshi come to depend upon one another as a crutch for coming to terms with their own issues, but Miyake’s proposal that this connection need go no further is as honest and refreshing as they come.

Nicole Kidman was yearning to make a romantic comedy.

The Oscar winner wanted to shift course after playing a tragically depressed housewife in the miniseries “Expats” on Prime Video. She wanted to have a good time. She wanted Hollywood, for once, to send a rom-com script her way.

When she received the screenplay for “A Family Affair,” Kidman leapt at the opportunity to shed her dramatic persona and take on lighter material. In the Netflix film, premiering Friday, she channels Brooke Harwood, a widowed mom and award-winning memoirist with writer’s block. Brooke’s 24-year-old daughter, Zara (Joey King), still lives at home while working her thankless day job as an overworked personal assistant to Chris Cole (Zac Efron), a vain and insecure movie star who threatens to fire her over the slightest mistakes.

One afternoon, Brooke unexpectedly encounters Chris, who’s 16 years her junior, and the physical attraction is instantaneous. It eventually blooms into real love, angering Zara; she worries that Chris will break Brooke’s heart just as he has with past exes. But Brooke is not just any woman. She’s got wisdom that comes with age, and Chris’ global fame as the star of a superhero franchise means nothing to her. Instead, she sees the playful, loving man within him. And he truly values her, body and soul, and gives her something to write about again. (Is it getting hot in here?)

Kidman, 57, and Efron, 36, previously played lovers in 2012’s “The Paperboy,” a gritty melodrama that has an extremely different ending. They were eager to reunite, this time in a joke-filled romance where the stakes are less life-and-death and more existential. The age-old question — What am I doing with my life? — reverberates throughout the film.

The Times recently spoke with Kidman, Efron and King to discuss the joys and taboos of filming a rom-com that pairs an older woman and younger man — a dynamic that continues to stoke public interest, and sometimes contempt. Kidman, as usual, was up for the challenge, and Efron found that irresistible. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I watch a lot of romantic comedies, and this one stands out as a happy marriage of casting and writing. How did Carrie Solomon’s screenplay get into your hands?

Kidman: It was just one of those things where it was sent to me and I read it and I went, “Yeah, I have to do something that is fun and funny and completely different.” Because I’d been through “Expats” — you know, the trajectory of my career has always led me more towards drama. I was like, “Please, I’m begging to have some fun and to be considered for some sort of romantic comedy at some point.” So, this came to me, and I was like, “Yes, please, please, please.” Because I never get offered them. I never get considered.

Efron: I think there was something specific about the characters that I felt there was a natural inroad to them. I could understand Chris on some levels and what he was going through, and that was just exciting to think about playing that for me. Then, of course, at that point Nicole was involved — and I dream of working with Nicole — and Joey was also in talks for It. That was just a dream scenario for a rom-com.

Kidman: Joey is so funny. It was that kind of thing [where] you’re going, “OK, great. There’s this young girl who can come in and just nail it.”

Efron: Initially the script was called — can I say that?

King: Yeah, say it. We’re [with] the L.A. Times.

Kidman: It had a different title.

Efron: It had a different title, which made it really exciting to read. It was called “Motherf—.” As soon as you get that script — when it says that on the front — you can’t help but want to read it.

Nicole and Joey, yours is not a typical mother-daughter story. At times, the roles reverse, and Zara occupies the position of overprotective parent — in this case wanting to keep Brooke away from Chris. How did it feel to channel that?

King: One of the most truthful and realistic parts about this, which I really love, is that particular moment when a child, no matter how old they are, realizes that their parent is a person, not just their parent. [Zara] needs to learn to grow up a bit, and Brooke’s trying to teach her and help her make her own decisions. Zara wants to be an adult but [is] still stuck in this child role. I think they both really see each other for the first time in terms of, “You’re not just my parent. You’re a real woman who has womanly desires and I need to grow up. I’m not just a kid.” That transition is really, deeply uncomfortable for them and they have a lot of tension and they’re fighting, and Chris is caught in the middle of that tension.

Kidman: There’s an enormous amount of love, too. They like hanging out together. … We watch TV together, we eat together, we watch shows together. There’s that sort of gap that I have that I’ve now filled with her, so at some point I have to let her go.

Joey King, left, says the one of the most truthful moments of the film is “when a child, no matter how old they are, realizes that their parent is a person, not just their parent.”

(Tina Rowden/Netflix)

Zac, you pull a Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail.” You take a guy with villain qualities and make him worth rooting for. How did you connect with Chris?

Efron: I can relate to Chris in a number of ways, but it was fun to … dive into different emotions and things that [make me] feel for him. He’s struggling. He’s not handling it the best. … I think he’s honestly trying his best and it’s just hard. He’s taking it out probably in a way he doesn’t mean to be, but it’s very abrasive toward his assistant. [Then] he meets Brooke, who he doesn’t have to really pretend to be anything but himself around.

Nicole and Zac, you both starred in “The Paperboy.” Zac’s character was hopelessly in love with Nicole’s, who in turn was hopelessly in love with a convicted felon (John Cusack). How was it reuniting 12 years later — for a rom-com?

Efron: The tone of [“The Paperboy”] is very different, but I think the building blocks of our characters were there for [“A Family Affair”], and that was kind of an unrequited love. We didn’t really get to take it the whole way and this really felt like we could draw a lot from that experience and take it to a whole new level. And it was easy. It felt really natural.

Kidman: We’re very easy with each other. I mean, part of the thing was going, ”If you’re doing this, I’ll do it [with you].” We wanted to do it together. I know how funny he is and he’s also just brave. Actually, with the comedy and stuff, he was like, “OK, let’s try this. We’ll try that.” It was just “anything goes.” … I just wanted to be able to be with a group of people who weren’t going to take everything so seriously. That allowed us [to] just play. Because a lot of it is play.

The scene when Zara discovers Chris and Brooke in bed, then hits her head in horror, is a brilliant bit of physical comedy. How many takes did that require?

Kidman [motioning toward King]: The perfectionist here kept asking to do it again and again and again.

King: When I’m doing anything that has any kind of stunt work in it, I like to watch [the] playback to see if I’m selling it enough. The head bump looked fake for the first three or four takes, so I probably did six or seven or eight.

Kidman: More than that. Maybe 20, 15? She’s like, “I’ll do it again!” We’re like, “Don’t hurt yourself.”

King: The two of them were so funny and supportive. They were getting such a kick out of it. They were off camera and they stayed to watch me.

Efron: It was so entertaining, we had to stay. Like, you were doing it 100%. There were no sound effects for you hitting your head. … It was some serious Jim Carrey vibes.

Kidman: Lucille Ball.

Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman reunited for “A Family Affair” after co-starring in 2012’s “The Paperboy.”

(Netflix)

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Like “The Idea of You,” “A Family Affair” is a lighthearted romance pairing an older woman and a younger man, a trope that society still treats with suspicion. Why are stories like this important to tell?

Kidman: I mean, I can only say I’m glad the whole landscape is changing, and it shouldn’t be an anomaly. … We’ve had an abundance of older men and younger women, but we haven’t had the abundance of older women with younger men. And why not? … [“A Family Affair”] was written by [Solomon], who went in and [said], “This is what I want to tell. This is the story I want to tell.” Now we’re going to start to see the effects of the work that has been done for the last five, 10 years where we’re still trying to change the storytelling landscape and put women in places of power so they can tell these stories — whether they be comedies, whether they be dramas, whether they be thrillers, whatever they are. We just haven’t had the equivalent that we’ve had with the male gaze.

Efron: We want more of it. We need more of it.

Kidman: And we’re lucky to have guys like Zac who will go, “Yeah, I’m up for it. Let’s go.”

Efron: Yeah, it works out great for me. I’m like —

King: “Yes!”

Filmmakers have told me that they have a hard time persuading actors to star in romantic comedies. Why is that often the case?

King: I think maybe some people don’t do [them] because they’re afraid of not being taken seriously as a serious actor. … People who are able to [act in] very different genres, I think it’s actually the biggest flex that you can have in terms of showing the range that you have. Look at Zac. He was training for “Iron Claw” while making “A Family Affair.” … What a flex.

Efron: It’s important. You really want to, I think, be able to at least try everything.

King: Comedy’s fun! Comedy’s fun and comedy’s hard. Comedy’s really hard.

Can comedy be harder than drama?

King: It can be.

Kidman: It depends who’s at the helm. It depends on the chemistry.

Efron: If you can bring it to a place where it’s real, it kind of feels oddly similar to a drama.

Kidman: They always say it’s such a fine [line], especially when you’re doing a drama, you can move very, very quickly into satire or comedy. … In that sense, it’s almost like with drama: You’ve got to go, “No, no, stay here in the present moment.” Because if we start to ridicule it, it can move into that place very quickly and then it’s hard to move back.

King: It’s hard, and it’s easier when you have a creative team that’s supportive and the actors you’re working with are super-nonjudgmental. We’re all sitting there while each of us takes these crazy swings in terms of improv and risky swings. Some of them don’t work, but I don’t feel embarrassed. … It’s still a difficult thing to get right sometimes, but you don’t feel like there’s any limitations on what you can do when you’ve got really great people to work with.

Yes, the stars go to the grocery store. Zara (Joey King), left, takes Chris (Zac Efron) shopping.

(Aaron Epstein/Netflix)

In the film, it’s revealed that Chris has not shopped at a grocery store since becoming mega-famous. Can any of you relate?

King: No, I can’t. I go to the grocery store all the time.

Kidman: I have teenage girls. We go to the grocery store because everybody wants something different.

King [to Kidman]: Do you find it hard to go to the grocery store, though? Just because everyone knows who you are?

Kidman: No. I put a cap on … and I hold my head high, and we go in there.

King: I love the grocery store.

Kidman: I have to say it’s kind of fun and relaxing.

King: Some people find the grocery store very anxiety-inducing, but I actually find it really lovely. I think it’s so fun, especially because usually I’m going to make something that I’m excited to make.

Chris asks Zara to buy him strawberry-flavored Oreos. Zac, what’s your go-to snack?

Kidman [to Efron]: You’re a great snacker because [you’re] very healthy.

Efron: I’ve been eating super-clean lately.

King: I got him these protein Pop-Tarts as part of his wrap gift.

Efron: It was the sweetest thing I’d had in months and it was so good. … I think I had them all in one sitting.