DUTY GOES BEYOND BATTLEFIELD.

Danish soldiers are under increasing pressure while serving in Afghanistan; one day when they’re ambushed, their commander (Pilou Asbaek) makes a fateful decision… A drama reminiscent of the director’s A Hijacking (2012), which was also set in a foreign country and presented its lead characters with moral dilemmas. Every attempt to hollywoodize this dramatic story, featuring battle scenes and courtroom showdowns, is rejected. Realism is reinforced by the presence of actual Danish combat soldiers surrounding the main leads. The strain that Asbaek’s character suffers is effectively contrasted with the tough situation his wife (Tuva Novotny) faces at home.

2015-Denmark. 115 min. Color. Produced by Rene Ezra, Tomas Radoor. Written and directed by Tobias Lindholm. Cast: Pilou Asbaek (Claus Pedersen), Søren Malling (Martin Olsen), Dar Salim (Najib Bisma), Tuva Novotny, Charlotte Munck, Dulfi Al-Jabouri.

Trivia: Original title: Krigen. 

Last word: “[The soldiers] would open it up to a world where we’re down to practical [details like] what do you do when you get out in the moment? How do you walk? How do you talk? How do you call your radio? How do you build your camp? Getting into all these details, I started to obtain the logic of the military world and that became necessary for me to [tell this story] at a human level and not to romanticize it. That was the whole point of doing this. I didn’t want it to be a political film. I wanted it to be a human film.” (Lindholm, Movable Fest)

IMDb