"A War"

I am continuing with watching Oscar nominated films. "A War" was nominated in the Best Foreign Language category.

In the last six or seven years, here in the UK we have seen a lot of Scandinavian television crime and political dramas on our televisions, starting with "The Killing" and "Wallender" and "Borgen". We've even had a very good Icelandic police drama (whose name I cannot remember). "1864" is a Danish television series in 8 programmes, about the Second Schleswig Holstein War, the Danes were on the losing side.

Apart from Ingmar Bergman's films, many of which are wonderful, we have not had many films from Scandinavia but following on from the televisions dramas, this is now changing. We have had a number of Danish films, such as "The Hunt" or "A Royal Affair", both starring Mads Mikellsen,

"A War" is a Danish film with English subtitles. It stars two actors that I know from those police dramas, Pilou Asbaek is a Danish Army platoon commander, fighting in Afghanistan. Tuva Novotny is his wife at home with the young family. The film has two interwoven plot lines, the platoon level fighting in Afghanistan and the family coping with long-term absence of the father. In the last third of the film, the father is returned to Denmark to face a Court Martial.

I really enjoyed this film very much. It is very well acted and nicely photographed, with Jordan standing in for Afghanistan. With the UK having taken part in the Afghan campaign and having lost a large number of young soldiers, I identified with the story. This is a film that reminds me that military action has great consequences at home as well as in the field. I recommend it highly.