These boys are part of a group of 10 or so who are responsible for an area where 45,000 mines have been planted just underneath the surface. Wilhelm (Leon Seidel) is the most optimistic, while the twins Ernest and Werner Lessner (Emil and Oscar Belton, twins themselves) are full of plans for their postwar future. Sebastian (Louis Hofmann) is the most mature, the de facto leader of the group, though the angry Helmut (Joel Basman) thinks he should be in charge. Though the boys are rather an undifferentiated mass during training, by the time they are moved out to the coast and placed in the sergeant’s ferocious care, we are able to tell the key members apart. He also tells them that “Denmark is not your friend, no one wants to see you here.” He canes them when they make mistakes, letting them know the error would have caused their death. Teaching them first on disarmed mines and then using the real thing, Jensen curtly advises the boys not to waste time on self-pity. Rasmussen demarcating an area of Danish beach to be cleared of mines, we are introduced to circumspect officer Ebbe Jensen (Mikkel Boe Flosgaard, King Christian VII in “A Royal Affair”) who trains the young boys who are going to do the dirty work. Suddenly he sees one soldier trying to walk off with a Danish flag as a souvenir, and he goes ballistic, savagely attacking the man and screaming at him in German, “Get out, go home, this is not your flag.”Īfter we see Sgt. Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, these youngsters were made prisoners of war in Denmark, a country livid with rage against all things German after five years of occupation. These were members of the Volkssturm, a German national militia created late in the war when able bodies were scarce.

And a key part of its plot involves not hardened combat veterans but young teenage boys, kids really, some no older than 15. Written and directed by Martin Zandvliet, “Land of Mine” takes place not during the war but just after it. “Land of Mine” makes good use of that plot mechanism, but it has a whole lot more going on as well.ĭenmark’s selection for the best foreign language Oscar and a triple winner at the European Film Awards, “Land of Mine” is a classic wide-screen World War II epic but with a number of unsettling twists.

From Alfred Hitchcock’s “Sabotage” to the Oscar-winning “The Hurt Locker,” explosive devices that can detonate at any moment are intrinsically dramatic. Nothing focuses a film like the threat of a bomb going off.

Land of mine film