Oscar Speeches: Denamrk’s A War–Directed by Tobias Lindholm

A War is Denmark’s Fifth Best Foreign Language Film Nominee in a Decade.

Written and directed by Tobias Lindholm, A War (Danish: Krigen) centers on a Danish military unit in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban. The commander is accused of having committed a war crime, while claiming to protect the civilians.

Lindholm: When “Babette’s Feast” and “Pelle the Conqueror” won the Oscars in the 1980s, and when Lars von Trier started to do his films, we’re a very small country, so when certain individuals go out and make extraordinary things, it kind of makes you believe that you can do it.

Everybody there is watching each other’s films. The community is strong. And I do believe what we’re seeing now is a generation that was brought up with Dogma 95. We’re doing something very different, but we’re on the shoulders of that movement: We know that the story needs to come first, and that we’re unable to compete with others on budget anyway.