A WAR FOCUSES ON RESPONSIBILITY FOR CIVILIAN DEATHS IN AFGHANISTAN
Claus Michael Pedersen (played by Pilou Asbæk) joins the Danish army and is assigned to the battlefield in Afghanistan (though filming is in Spain and Turkey) while his wife Maria (Tuva Novotny) and three young children try to cope in his absence. One day in the heat of battle he orders bombardment of a compound, and eleven children die. Pedersen was hoping to rescue a fellow soldier, and thought that enemy fire was coming from the compound. When the incident is reported, he is flown to Denmark as a defendant in a military trial, charged with committing a war crime. Directed by Tobias Lindholm, the heart of the film is the trial, though much film footage seeks to humanize Klaus. Nominated by the Political Film Society as best film on human rights of 2016, A War provides much suspense, presumably six months of his life, regarding the possible verdict, as Maria asks Claus to lie to avoid imprisonment. MH