It’s refreshing (and perhaps educational) to see a World War Two film where the Allies are, for want of a better term, the “bad guys”, and the German forces are given a human and relatable face. If writer-director Martin Zandvliet can be accused of over-simplification or bias in his angle, then it is quite plausible to suggest that he strove to make a comment on the complicated nature of all wars and all people – no participants are ever wholly innocent, in the same way that they are never irrefutably guilty. It has also been suggested that Great Britain and Denmark broke the Geneva Convention of 1929 by forcing prisoners of war (of any age) to do such dangerous work. A dark and under-explored part of Danish and Allied history, Land of Mine takes the conceivable view that many of the German POWs forced to undertake this dangerous and overwhelming task were mainly boys, conscripted into Hitler’s Volkssturm in the final months of the war, and boys who were, therefore, ill-prepared, under-trained, and less culpable for many of the Nazis’ crimes.
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