Little Soldier
Lotte (Dyrholm) returns from the war in Iraq bruised, traumatized and numb. She went there with the intention of doing some good but didn’t succeed, although what did happen there is not made clear. Weeks later her brothel-owning father (Nielsen) is told that she is back and he contacts her. But when she asks him for money he offers her a job driving around Nigerian prostitute Lily (Brown). Lotte who has had scant dealings with her father (she was brought up by her grandparents after her mother’s death) accepts.
Olesen and Aakeson tackle several important themes in ”Little Soldier”. The Western attitude that human traffi cking is an inevitable and at times even benefi cial enterprise; the estranged parent-daughter relationship; the terrible trauma of returning to normality from the madness of the Iraqi front (a theme which also featured in another Danish fi lm, ”Brothers”, recently remade by Hollywood). And they also detail the old-fashioned European attitude to the Third World, whether that is intervening in wars (Denmark’s premier is seen justifying it on TV) or presuming to tell African immigrants what they should do with their lives, and when they don’t listen, imposing solutions on them which are unacceptable.
– DAN FAINARU, SCREEN INTERNATIONAL
Duration: 100 min
Dialogue: English, Danish
Subtitles: English
