It involved using numerous German soldiers to clear hundreds of thousands of land mines that the Nazis had left buried along the Danish coast, resulting in the deaths of many. The punishment described by writer/director Martin Zandvliet in “Land of Mine,” though, is collective.
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Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.Such a display of anger at the Nazi occupiers on the part of a Dane is understandable, but it’s only individual. “As long as Netflix puts it in cinemas, then I’m happy.” “He’s lost in his own shame, and tries to find his way back,” said Zandvliet. Next up: English and Japanese-language Netflix film “The Outsider” starring Jared Leto as an American veteran in ’60s Japan with PTSD. “I’m one of the first ones to make humans out of the monsters. “I’m a little disappointed,” said Zandvliet.
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The movie nabbed great reviews and strong box office around the world - except for Germany. “We put up barbed wire to keep tourists away.” “We did everything we could to make it look like a wild picture of nature,” said the director, who works with his wife, cinematographer Camilla Hjelm Knudsen, using handheld cameras. For five weeks, the production took over an old military base with a piece of unspoiled beach.
The film’s dramatic location is the gorgeous long stretch of Denmark’s west coast. “Now he pulls in money,” said Zandvliet, “and they are very happy.” The director had to fight the distributor to be able to use self-taught actor and supporting player Møller in his first lead role. I’m not saying hugs will save the world, but you do need to stop and think about your reaction. It’s human nature to want revenge after something terrible happens. It’s our responsibility to make sure we don’t become the monsters we fight, to treat each other well. Bombing Syria - it doesn’t help anything. This happens in any country: Japan, China. It’s more the dilemma of the terrible things that happen after a war. There was a big debate after this movie in the media and TV, where everybody called me not patriotic enough. “Even though I say I’m not pointing fingers at the Danes,” admitted Zanvliet, “I know I am. “Land of Mine,” shot mostly in German, kicked up controversy. It seems our country doesn’t care it’s so small we could be wiped out in a heartbeat.” Whether it’s Bush, Obama, Trump or Hitler, we shake hands. “We don’t care who is kicking on our door. “Denmark is a hard tactical country,” said Zanvliet. Some villagers came to watch it like a picnic.”ĭenmark and Germany have been at odds through most of their history, as Germany took over more and more Scandinavian territory. The death march walking over mines, that happened. The sergeant really represents all the sergeants on the west coast, where some were evil and some good. The fictionalized character is the sergeant who at first starves the young boys and treats them harshly, but eventually finds his humanity and comes to care for them. In the beginning many of the POWs didn’t get food, lived in terrible places.” “We know how many mines there were, and who died,” he said.
Zandvliet fictionalized this true story, balancing dramatic tricks with facts and numbers.
See more Buying or Selling a Movie at Sundance is More Complicated Than Ever I walked around a cemetery looking for the German names, then suddenly I saw that the Germans were very young. “Every country has its own demons that no one wants to let out, even in Denmark. “I was looking for the dark chapters of our country,” he said in a phone interview. The story began when Zandvliet started digging into the ways that Denmark broke the Geneva Convention. For every 5,000 defused mines, one soldier was killed. “Land of Mine” follows a hard-nosed Sergeant (Roland Møller), who after five years of brutal occupation by Germany, commands a troop of German POWs, some as young as 13, to use their bare hands to defuse land mines buried in beach sand. “And you never know what to expect in terms of awards … Unfortunately this small, local story feels more global and more relevant than ever.”Īt the end of the war in 1945, more than 2,000 German POWs were forced to remove over 1.5 million land mines from the west coast of Denmark. “It’s an amazing year for world cinema,” said Zandvliet, who also edits documentaries. The result was “Land of Mine,” a well-reviewed but controversial box office hit in Scandinavia and Europe that scored three European Film Awards on the way to a coveted Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film. Finding a new way in was the challenge for Danish writer-director Martin Zandvliet (“Applause”).