A Danish officer, Michael, is sent away to the International Security Assistance Force operation in Afghanistan for three months. His first mission there is to find a young radar technician who had been separated from his squad some days earlier. While on the search, his helicopter is shot down and he is taken as a prisoner of war, but is reported dead to the family.
Acting
Ulrich Thomsen's kitchen table breakdown — shattering.
Direction
Bier's handheld intimacy makes your own living room feel unsafe.

Director
Susanne Bier
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Bier filmed the Afghanistan sequences in just two weeks in Turkey; the kitchen scenes took longer because the actors kept breaking down between takes.
This was Denmark's first major film about Afghanistan deployment, released while Danish soldiers were still dying there — audiences walked out of Q&As with veterans.