Nigel Ingram

It’s always interesting to watch a WW2 film that’s made about/from the viewpoint of the occupied countries, in this case, The Netherlands in 1944. This Dutch film, co-produced with Netflix, is a worthy attempt at showing all sides: collaborators, resistance fighters, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Germans, and British and Canadian soldiers, who are battling to secure a route to the crucial port of Antwerp. It does quite well at showing the confusion and horror of war in a country on the verge of liberation, but still in the grip of a ruthless occupier. It’s all bound together by the focus on a single family. To me, its flaws are that it’s overlong and a tad over-acted (lots of shots of wide-eyed, gawping young men facing the horror of war, and the recurring theme of comradeship forged and lost). Still, a fair attempt at depicting a less well-known aspect of the liberation of Europe.