The film “The Green Border” by Agnieszka Holland touches on the difficult topic of the humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border. The work of the Polish director moved the audience at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. The production received a special jury award and a 15-minute standing ovation.
Filmweb hid negative reviews of “The Green Border”. Out of eight thousand, 13 ratings remain
The Polish right wing reacts less enthusiastically to the film. Long before the film’s cinema premiere, politicians expressed the opinion that it attacked Poles and their uniforms, and Zbigniew Ziobro shamefully compared Holland’s work to Nazi propaganda. Their voters only needed reviews from people who did not watch the production and the cast of the title to massively give negative ratings to the film on the Filmweb website. In this way, the awarded work received an average rating of 2/10 many days before its premiere.
Green border – ratings Filmweb/screenshot
Filmweb decided to react to this ridiculous situation and hid the negative ratings. They have not been completely removed – if a given user follows or has a friend who gave “Green Border” one star, they will see it. In just a few days, the production received almost eight thousand reviews. This number is impossible because currently only people present at the Venice festival and the press screening for journalists have seen the painting.
Currently, the website states that Holland’s work has been reviewed by 13 critics. The average star they gave was 7.8 out of 10, which is roughly in line with the freshness percentage on Rotten Tomatoes (87%). Nearly five thousand Filmweb users declare that they have not seen the production yet, but want to do so.
Green border – film profile on Filmweb Filmweb/screenshot
Filmweb users write about censorship
However, the comments did not disappear from the website, in which, apart from the growing criticism of the film (which the commenters had not seen), there were also accusations against the website. “Why does Filmweb censor viewers but not critics?” we read.
Review bombing is the act of issuing negative reviews in order to harm the sales or popularity of a given product or service due to presenting a worldview different from those of the reviewers. The phenomenon is becoming more and more frequent and does not concern only Poland. Productions from the largest studios face this practice most often when they introduce non-white or non-heteronormative characters into the picture. A fairly new phenomenon poses a challenge to portals such as Filmweb, IMDb and Metacritic on how to deal with the increasingly frequent rash of trolling.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
