Land of Mine 2016

As the dust settles on a war-torn Europe, the German Wehrmacht and SS occupiers find themselves behind barbed wire, prisoners of a liberated Denmark. A group of young conscripts is dispatched to the west coast, where they undergo rigorous training in the art of manual mine removal. Under the stern gaze of Danish Sergeant Carl Leopold Rasmussen, these former enemies are tasked with defusing an astonishing 45,000 landmines, scattered like deadly seeds across the sandy dunes. If they can meet this daunting target, Rasmussen promises to return them home in a mere three months.

As the days blend together in a haze of dust and desperation, one young prisoner, Sebastian Schumann (Schumann), struggles to maintain a sense of hope amidst the bleakness. Meager rations and post-war shortages take their toll on the POWs’ already fragile bodies, leaving them malnourished and vulnerable. In this desperate environment, Ernst forms an unlikely bond with a local girl, pilfering bread from her basket to sustain his comrades.

Tragedy strikes when Wilhelm’s arms are blown off during a mine-clearing operation, sending him to a field hospital where he ultimately succumbs to his injuries. The surviving prisoners fall ill after consuming grain tainted with rat feces, forcing Rasmussen to intervene by administering a gruesome seawater purge. As the days drag on, the sergeant’s initial disdain for his charges slowly gives way to a paternal concern, as he begins to pilfer food from the base to feed them and invents devices like Sebastian’s productivity-boosting gadget.

However, Rasmussen’s kindness is not without consequence. Captain Ebbe Jensen (Jensen), suspicious of the sergeant’s leniency towards their German prisoners, arrives with a group of British soldiers intent on exacting punishment. Rasmussen steps in to protect his charges, but not before Ebbe confronts him about the thefts, accusing him of being too soft on the enemy. The boys’ already tenuous grip on morale is further eroded when Werner meets a gruesome end while attempting to clear a particularly treacherous minefield, leaving his twin brother Ernst shattered and grief-stricken.

Here’s a rephrased version:

Following an inconspicuous game of football, Rasmussen’s demeanor takes a drastic turn after his dog is devastatingly blown up in a supposedly secure zone of the beach. The incident triggers a violent outburst, and he subjects the boys to another round of merciless abuse. Under the guise of ensuring their safety, he forces them to march in tandem across the cleared zones, scrutinizing every step for hidden dangers. However, when a young local girl wanders into an uncleared area, her frantic mother sets off in search of Rasmussen only to find him nowhere to be found. The boys, moved by the desperate situation, volunteer to intervene and rescue the girl. Ernst selflessly walks through the treacherous minefield, keeping the distraught child calm while Sebastian clears a path to safety for them. Despite their success in rescuing the girl, Ernst’s tragic decision to follow his brother into the uncleared zone results in his heartbreaking demise.

As the boys witness Rasmussen’s brutal treatment of them and then Ernst’s ultimate sacrifice, the man’s demeanor undergoes a significant shift, and he begins to treat them with a semblance of kindness. He reassures a grief-stricken Sebastian that they will soon be reunited with their families, and while four of the boys continue to laboriously clear the beach alongside Rasmussen, the others load deactivated mines onto a truck. However, when one of the boys carelessly tosses a mine onto the truck bed without proper defusal, it inadvertently triggers a catastrophic explosion that claims multiple lives. Only Sebastian, Ludwig, Helmut, and Rodolf manage to survive.

Despite being promised that they would be repatriated once all the mines were cleared, Jensen secretly decides to dispatch the remaining four boys to join a team defusing landmines in another coastal region. Rasmussen vehemently argues against this decision, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. Undeterred, he takes matters into his own hands and drives the boys within 500 meters of the German border, leaving them to make their escape towards freedom.