![]() So be forewarned that you will be jumping out of your seat in fright too often for comfort. ![]() ![]() There are 6 blow ups in the film, but director Zandvliet is smart enough to let them occur when least expected. But danger lurks every second, as they can be blown up by a land mine, if they let their guard down for even a second. The German boys dream of going home, to get a girl, to eat decent German food. The POWs are just boys, recruited late in the war as older able-bodied men were dwindling. With minimal training, they must remove 45,000 land mines from the local beach, among 2.2 million that the Nazis planted along the western coast. This same sergeant is responsible for 14 young German POWs with no prior training, given the dangerous task of dismantling the land mines left on the west coast of Denmark.īased on a true but previously hidden story, Martin Zandvliet’s LAND OF MINE is a tension-filled drama about Denmark’s darkest hour when a group of German POWs – most of them young boys – were sacrificed in the aftermath of WWII. He sights a German stealing a Danish flag and lets him have it. A Dane sergeant, Carl Rasmussen (Roland Møller) is driving along the road while German troops are evacuating. The film begins with the title, May 1945, five years after the German Occupation in Denmark. I have seen the film three times and is my favourite choice for the Winner for Best Foreign Film after TONI ERDMANN. It is a difficult film to watch, but an essential one. It is a film that took a while to reach screens in Toronto, having premiered two years ago at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Danish entry for this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, LAND OF MINE is a film where hate dominates, but a film in which a hidden story needs to be told. Stars: Roland Møller, Louis Hofmann, Joel Basman Paris, France-Empire, 1985.Deadlines to Submit your Screenplay, Novel, Story, or Poem to the festival: Voldman, Daniele: Attention Mines 1944-1947. There is no documentation of the actual casualties, but I've read of estimates ranging from hundreds to thousands. It was not after the Red Cross had protested repeatedly that the POWs were issued more adequate equipment than bayonets(!) and there was a significant decline in the number of fatalities. A former mine clearer from Munich reported that only three men out of a total of 30 in his group survived the month of April 1945 unhurt. Historians estimate that in France alone, 50,000 German POWs were thus forced into minesweeping units. The US relented to the argument made by French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, who argued that after Germany's unconditional surrender, "there was no longer a German government that could have reacted." With no proper training and initially inadequate tools, POWs were forced to risk, and often loose, their lives clearing mines - regardless of whether the particular minefields had been laid by German army engineers or by the Allies in their attempts to hold back German forces.įrance even managed to have the US hand over numerous German POWs for such operations and for marginally less dangerous slave labour in the coal mines. Germans were dragooned into minesweeping operations were not in Denmark, but among others and on a wider scale in France. In disregard of those rules, German POWs even in Western Europe were forced into dangerous and often deadly tasks. The tasks shall not be excessive." In fact, Chapter II Article 20 of the Hague convetion even mandates: "After the conclusion of peace, the repatriation of prisoners of war shall be carried out as quickly as possible." (.) The State may utilize the labour of prisoners of war (.). One of the consequences of both "unconditional surrender" and the relabeling of captured Germans into "disarmed enemy forces" was that there was no protecting power to protest against their maltreatment under international treaties.Īrticle 32 of the 1929 Geneva Convention unequivocally states: "It is forbidden to use prisoners of war at unhealthful or dangerous work." Chapter II, Articles 4 and 6 sate that "Prisoners of war (.) must be humanely treated. German POWs at the end of WWII were helpless.
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