Another piece of Danish war cinema: Land of Mine

[Finkeren]

Since there was some interest in the community about this years Danish war movie "9th of April", I thought, I'd alert you to this:

 

It's a new Danish/German production that's still in theatres as of me writing this.

 

The Danish title is "Under Sandet" (Litterally "Beneath the Sand"), but in English it's gotten the title "Land of Mine", which I think it's a clever little double entendre, given that it's mostly about nationalistic anti-German sentiment in Denmark immediately after WW2.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bplXvG18De4

 

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find an English captioned version of the trailer, but it's basically about a group of preteen and teenage boys, drafted into the German army at the end of the war, ending up as POWs and shortly after the war sent to Denmark to aid in the clearing of approximately 2 million German land mines along the west coast of Jutland. It's not completely historically accurate, as none of the POW companies sent to clear mines were made up entirely of young boys, and the main storyline about the Sergeant learning to see his former enemies as humans is entirely fictional, but it sorta gives an impression about how Germans were viewed by the population of much of the rest of Europe in the years following the war.

 

There is a short scene with some subtitles here:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANL-Qnf6Eh0

 

The behind-the-scenes stuff after the scene unfortunately has no subs.

 

Let me know, if this is interesting to any of you, I'll keep let you know my thoughts when I go see it, and will keep you posted, when it becomes available online.

[Blooddawn1942]

Since You mentioned that this was a Danish\ German co-production, I wonder if there is also a German version or at least an international English version of the movie. Didn't saw the trailer yet because I'm on my mobile phone with limited data volume, but according to your description, this sounds interesting.

[Finkeren]

Well the film premiered back in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, and has been screened on at least a dozen festivals since then, so there can be no doubt, that they're going for a broader international release.

 

I don't think it'll be dubbed though. Part of the films tension apparently rests on the language barrier between the German boys and their guards, which would be ruined in a dubbed version, so be prepared to read subtitles.

 

From what I've heard from people who have seen it (other than simply that it's good) is that the dialogue is more or less evenly split between German and Danish.