In 2021, a Syrian refugee family—parents Bashir and Amina, their three children Nur, Ghania, and an infant, with Bashir’s grandfather Mohamed—arrive at an airport in Minsk, Belarus. The group plans to cross the open ‘green border’ from Belarus to Poland, go through Germany, then meet a relative of theirs in Sweden. Leila, an English-speaking refugee from Afghanistan, accompanies them. Once the group arrives at the Polish border, they are forced out of their transport van and made to cross on foot into the forest. They are eventually found by the Polish authorities and forcibly transported through the barbed wire fence back to Belarus. In one altercation, the Polish guards throw a pregnant African refugee over the barbed wire, injuring her.

Jan, a young soon-to-be father, is a member of the Polish border patrol. The commander instructs the guards to send all migrants back to Belarus, and that they are merely Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s weapons in an attempt to provoke the EU by opening the border. A recording of the pregnant woman being violently thrown over the fence hits the news, and his wife questions his employment as a guard. When not working, he renovates an old abandoned house, which he discovers that refugees are squatting in when he isn’t there. While patrolling at night, he and another guard discover the dead body of a pregnant refugee. Instructed to ignore the dead bodies of migrants at the border, the two dispose of her body over the fence. Jan, disturbed and conflicted, has a emotional breakdown in his car.

A group of activists that seek to aid the migrants find the group in the woods, providing them fresh clothes, food, water, and medical attention. Due to laws surrounding the exclusion zone and risks of human trafficking charges, the activists are unable to help the migrants any further. Once again, the migrants are taken back to the Belarusian border, in which the Belarusian police threaten to open fire. During the scuffle, Nur and Leila escape into the woods.

Julia, a widowed therapist who lives close to the border, hears cries for help coming from the woods. She finds Leila and an unconscious Nur slowly sinking into deep mud in the swamp. Julia calls for help, but Nur slips completely into the mud and drowns. Leila is ejected from the hospital and detained by the Polish authorities; it is left uncertain what becomes of her. Traumatized by the experience, Julia decides to join the activists. They discover a Moroccan refugee abandoned in the woods with an injured leg. Unable to take him back on foot, the activists agree leave him there overnight, but Julia returns alone in the night to find that he has disappeared, and she is arrested for entering the exclusion zone. After being released from jail, Julia decides she’s never leaving anyone behind ever again. One of her patients, Bogdan, takes in several French-speaking teenage migrants from Africa, who bond with Bogdan’s teenage children over a shared taste in music.

The Syrian family, devastated after Nur’s death, come into contact with a human smuggler who conceals them in the back of his truck. They are stopped by two Polish officers, one of them being Jan. Jan inspects the vehicle and spots Bashir in the back of the truck, but he ignores him and lets them go.

In the epilogue, after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian refugees are shown entering Poland with ease, in stark contrast to the cruelty that the previous migrants were subjected to at the Polish-Belarusian border.