![land of mine true story land of mine true story](https://0901.static.prezi.com/preview/v2/ampwuwgewfmnt2np3fbiwixcut6jc3sachvcdoaizecfr3dnitcq_3_0.png)
LAND OF MINE TRUE STORY MOVIE
I don’t think I’m spoiling anything to mention that some of the 14 kids in the original group aren’t going to live to the end of the movie – they’re crawling on a beach looking for and defusing land mines, so of course there will be casualties. Carl ( Herr Feldwebel to the kids) ends up caring about their welfare in spite of his own misgivings and the commands from above to treat them like slaves. The kids don’t stand out much as individual characters, but are vehicles for telling the greater story, including how Sgt. There’s no question over their volition here: the boys are barricaded in their little hut at the end of each work day and aren’t even fed for the first few days at the beach. The group includes Helmut Morbach, who is either the most realistic kid of the group or just an asshole, depending on your view Sebastian Schumm, who is the de facto leader of the troop Wilhelm Hahn, a naive kid oblivious to what’s ahead of him either in Denmark or after a return home and the twins Werner and Ernst Lessner, who plan to go home and become bricklayers to help rebuild Germany now that the war is over. One boy doesn’t even make it out of the initial training. Carl Rasmussen, both of whom appear to be completely unconcerned with their charges’ welfare – they are human fodder for clearing the mines, and if they die in the effort, that’s the Germans’ fault for placing the mines there in the first place. The kids forced to clear the mines arrive at a Danish beach under the command of Captain Ebbe and Sgt. (It’s available to rent/buy on amazon and iTunes.) Land of Mine is sparse and taut, rarely sentimental until the very end, and doesn’t let the Danes off the hook one bit for the choice to force children to pay for the sins of their fathers. Half the Germans either died or were maimed in the work, and the question of whether this constituted a war crime still hangs over Danish history. The story is fictional but is based on the real-life effort after World War II where 2000 German POWs, many of them teenagers or elderly men, were forced to come to Denmark to clear the up to two million landmines the Nazis had planted along the country’s western coast. The Danish-German drama Land of Mine (Under Sandet) was one of five nominees for the Best Foreign Language film at the most recent Academy Awards ceremony and swept the Robert Awards, the Danish equivalent of the Oscars, last year.