Denmark 1945. The defeated German occupiers have retreated but have left a cruel parting gift – the beaches of the west coast of Denmark are studded with more than a million landmines. The British and Danish come up with a plan: use German prisoners of war, many of them teenage boys, to clear the beaches. This oppressively tense drama follows one squad of callow, terrified soldiers who have barely grown out of childhood and into their uniforms, and the Danish officer who grudgingly becomes their protector.

It’s a handsome film – the palette is all mossy greens and pensive grey-blues – but director Martin Peter Zandvliet’s use of sound, or the lack of it, is his most powerful tool. Silence, but for the oblivious buzz of insects, is a vacuum, and tension floods in. That said, the cliched schematic of the war film – that any character who expresses hope about the future is doomed – holds particularly true here.