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Land of Mine (Under sandet)
Following the end of World War II in Europe and the liberation of Denmark from German occupation in May 1945, the Wehrmacht and SS occupiers became prisoners of war. A group of young German prisoners are sent to the west coast where they are trained to use their bare hands to remove the landmines that the Germans had buried in the sand. After their training, the boys are left under the charge of Danish sergeant Carl Leopold Rasmussen, who is determined to treat the young prisoners without sympathy. Marching his squad onto the dunes, he promises that they will return home in three months, if they can each defuse six mines per hour for a total of 45,000 mines.
One of the boys, Sebastian Schumann, attempts to remain optimistic as they discuss their plans for when they return home. The POWs are given little food due to post-war shortages and begin to suffer from malnourishment, with Ernst befriending a young local girl to steal some bread from her. One day, while defusing a mine, Wilhelm's arms are blown off and he later dies in a field hospital. Most of the boys become ill after eating grain contaminated with rat faeces that they found on a nearby farm; they are treated by Rasmussen who makes them purge themselves with seawater. Rasmussen gradually treats his charges more kindly, stealing food from the base for them and tries to maintain morale by reporting that Wilhelm has survived. He also allows the boys to use a device invented by Sebastian to improve productivity.
Hearing rumours of Rasmussen stealing food for the boys, his commanding officer Captain Ebbe Jensen brings a group of British soldiers to abuse and torment the boys. Rasmussen stops them but is confronted about the theft by Ebbe, who accuses him of being sympathetic towards the Germans. During another day of demining, Werner is blown to bits after encountering landmines buried one above another, leaving his twin brother Ernst distraught.
After a casual game of football, Rasmussen's dog is blown up in a supposedly cleared zone of the beach. This causes Rasmussen to snap and begin abusing the boys again. He forces them to march close together across the cleared zones of the beach to confirm that they are safe. When a young local girl walks out into an uncleared area of beach, her mother comes looking for Rasmussen only to find him gone. The boys volunteer to help save the girl. Ernst walks through the uncleared minefield to keep the little girl calm whilst Sebastian clears a path to safety for her. They manage to rescue her but instead of returning to safety with Sebastian, Ernst decides he cannot go on without his brother and commits suicide by walking into the uncleared section and is promptly killed.
After witnessing this act of kindness and bravery from the boys, Rasmussen relents in his treatment of them and reassures a grieving Sebastian that they will soon be able to go home. While four of the boys continue to clear the beach with Rasmussen, the rest of them are loading unexploded mines onto a truck. When one of the boys tosses a mine that was not properly defused onto the truckbed of deactivated mines, he accidentally sets off a massive explosion which kills himself and his nearby comrades. Only Sebastian, Ludwig, Helmut and Rodolf remain.
Although the boys had been promised that they would be sent home after defusing all of the mines, without Rasmussen's knowledge Jensen decides to send the surviving four to join a team defusing landmines in another coastal area. Rasmussen argues in vain for Jensen to rescind the order. He decides to rescue the boys and then drives them within 500 metres (1,600 ft) of the German border so they can run to their freedom.