Agent Of Change
LAND OF MINE I Oscar nom’d WW2 drama shows the darker side of Denmark…
According to Danish-born Martin Zandvliet, writer-director of the intense new drama Land Of Mine, his countrymen have always been positively represented in terms of World War 2 movies. “The Danes are always the heroes,” he says. “But everybody knows in Denmark that we also have a dark side; that we were filled up with hate and we weren’t always that good.”
Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars, Land Of Mine tells how, in the aftermath of WW2, the Danes broke the Geneva Convention by forcing young German POWs to comb Denmark’s west coastline and diffuse the 1.5 million land mines planted there by Hitler’s forces. With many of these callow youths ill-equipped to carry out such a dangerous task, the casualties were devastating.
Never documented in history books, Zandvliet researched his facts via hospital records and gravestones, crafting his tale to examine the moral dilemma of a hate-filled nation wreaking cruel revenge upon their prisoners. “I would’ve done the same,” he admits. “I would’ve put the
Germans out there. They should disarm their own mines. But we should’ve made it easier for them, helped them more, maybe not used kids.”
Choosing character actor Roland Møller in his first major lead, as the bullish Danish sergeant leading this operation, Zandvliet turned to Michael Haneke’s casting director Simone Bär to find the young Germans. From her selection, the director hand-picked his cast without specifying parts. “None of the boys knew who they were going to play.” Only after they spent time together, and a natural hierarchy formed, were roles assigned.
Casting aside, the biggest technical challenge was working in sand, which throws up huge continuity problems. “It was so time consuming,” sighs Zandvliet. “Eighty people on the beach is a lot of footsteps. Once you’ve done the scene, you need to dig all the mines down. So we had people walking around with these blowers taking away the footsteps. I can imagine how it was to shoot Lawrence Of Arabia!”
Helping maintain his sanity, Zandvliet kept it a family affair.
His wife, Camilla Hjelm Knudsen, was his cinematographer. His daughter features briefly in a scene, and his son was always present. “I liked to try and create a [John] Cassavetes mood on the set, just without the alcohol!” he laughs. “I don’t want to be the absent father: Oh, where’s Daddy? He’s away on the movie set.”
Thanks to the success of Land Of Mine, Zandvliet has since wrapped the English and Japanese-language Netflix film The Outsider, starring Jared Leto as an American veteran suffering from PTSD in 1960s Japan. It’s been his dream to work in English, he says, and reach a bigger audience. “If you have something on your mind, you want people to hear it.”
ETA | 4 AUGUST / LAND OF MINE OPENS THIS SUMMER.