April 9th

Early on the morning of 9 April 1940 a bicycle infantry company in the Danish army is put on alert: the Germans have crossed the border. Second Lieutenant Sand and his men are sent south; their task is to slow the enemy and hold until reinforcements arrive. They set off on bicycles. Armoured vehicles come the other way. They take a position in a town, fall back, take another. The soldiers do not fully know what is happening. Towards midday an order arrives from behind them. Roni Ezra directs. Tobias Lindholm wrote the screenplay. Pilou Asbaek plays Lieutenant Sand and Lars Mikkelsen is in the cast. It is a Danish production. The film opened in Denmark on 12 March 2015 and its budget was twenty two million Danish kroner. The narrative stays with one company and never rises to the larger picture. The matter it treats is the order; while the soldiers are fighting the government takes another decision, and that decision reaches the field afterwards. The film builds no heroism; the engagements are short, confusing and scattered. The bicycles are true to the record; the army did meet the invasion that day with bicycle units. The narrative does not personify the Germans and the other side stays distant. The film takes Denmark's very quick surrender that morning as a direct subject. The relationships among the soldiers are kept simple and no back stories are given. Its limit is scale; the narrative is narrow, the combat small, and the historical background thinly told. Who it is for: viewers who like realist war films and Nordic productions. Who it is not for: it is narrow, coldly told, and it ends in defeat.