If your palms weren't already sweaty, they will be after that.Ĭredit writer/director Zandvleit with finding a fact-based World War II story that's not been told, and told again. Then, just moments into the film, an explosion behind the sandbags knocks all the boys off their feet.
Movie audiences though, may feel a bit differently about these particular teenagers, seeing the terror in their eyes as they go through training, first with dummy mines, and then with live ones - successfully defusing them behind sandbags as the Danish officers bark instructions. After five years of Nazi occupation, the Danes do not look kindly on Germans. And he figures that if they blow themselves up in the process, there's a rough justice in that. "Are you soldiers?" he wonders, before deciding it doesn't really matter, as they're Germans. POWs, as it happens, who are scarcely more than children. One Danish sergeant (Roland Møller) has been assigned one beach, 45,000 buried mines, and twelve German POW's to find and defuse them all. As his film begins, the fighting is over, German soldiers are prisoners of war, and the Danes are putting them to work on tasks too dangerous for their own men. The coastline wasn't declared officially safe until 2012.īut it's the immediate aftermath of the war that interests writer-director Martin Zandvliet. Perhaps the strategy worked, since American and British forces landed miles away in Normandy on D-Day, but it left Denmark with a booby trapped west coast, and a logistical problem of staggering proportions. The World War II drama, Land of Mine, has what sounds like the season's proudest, most patriotic title, but it's actually a dark pun - a reference to the more than one million land mines the Nazis buried on the Danish coastline, hoping to deter an Allied invasion. The football story leads the pack with five nominations the other nominees for best film are A War, Land Of Mine, The Idealist and Bridgend.įor best documentary, the Bodil nominees are At Home In The World (Andreas Kofoed) Misfits (Jannik Splidsboel) Fassbinder - To Love Without Demands (Christian sting Thomsen) The Man Who Saved the World (Peter Anthony) and Natural Disorder (Christian Sønderby Jepsen).īest non-Danish, non-US film nominees are Leviathan, Mad Max: Fury Road, Amy, Marshland and Mommy.Louis Hofmann (left) and Roland Møller (right) in Land of Mine.Ĭamilla Hjelm Knudsen/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Meanwhile, Summer of ‘92 leads the nominations for the Danish film critics’ Bodil Awards, which are held March 5. Danish audiences can vote for the Blockbuster Audience Award. Nearly 2,000 Academy members vote for the winners. In a healthy year for Danish film, there were a record 27 features in the running for the prizes. The Best Documentary nominees are Andreas Koefoed’s At Home In The World, Peter Anthony’s The Man Who Saved the World, Georg Larsen and Kasper Vedsmand’s The Dvor Massacre, Christian Sønderby Jepsen’s Natural Disorder and Hanna Polak’s Something Better to Come. In the Best Actor category, first-time nominee Roland Møller from Land Of Mine faces off with former winners Mads Mikkelsen ( Men & Chicken), Peter Plauborg ( The Idealist), Pilou Asbæk ( A War) and Ulrich Thomsen ( Summer of ‘92).
The best director race includes Rosendahl, Zandvliet, Lindholm, Michael Noer for Key House Mirror and newcomer May el-Toukhy for Long Story Short.īest Original Screenplay nominees are Summer of ‘92 (Anders August & Kasper Barfoed) Men & Chicken (Anders Thomas Jensen) Land of Mine (Martin Zandvliet) A War (Tobias Lindholm) and Long Story Short (Maren Louise Käehne and May el-Toukhy). The nominees for best feature film are The Idealist, Land of Mine, Men & Chicken, Summer of ’92 and A War. Other nominees include Tobias Lindholm’s Oscar-shortlisted A War, Christina Rosendahl’s The Idealist, Kasper Barfoed’s Summer of ’92, Anders Thomas Jensen’s Men & Chicken as well as Kenneth Kainz’ The Shamer’s Daughter. Land of Mine, about German teenagers forced to clear mines from Danish beaches after the Second World War, garnered 14 nominations. Toronto hit Land of Mine by Martin Zandvliet leads the nominations for the Danish Film Academy’s Robert Awards, which will be bestowed on Feb 7.