The Netflix War Film Viewers Keep Sobbing Through That Finally Gets Its Moment Next to ‘Saving Private Ryan’
Some of the most devastating war films in cinema history arrive not from Hollywood blockbuster machines but from smaller national industries with deeply personal stories to tell. Denmark’s contribution to that tradition has been quietly earning new admirers on Netflix, years after it first stunned domestic audiences, and the wave of emotional responses it keeps generating suggests it has found exactly the audience it deserves.
‘The Shadow in My Eye‘, known in Denmark by its original title ‘Skyggen i mit øje’ and released internationally on Netflix as ‘The Bombardment‘, is a Danish war drama written and directed by Ole Bornedal. Bornedal is also the director behind ‘1864’ and ‘The Night Watchman’, and the film was produced by Jonas Allen and Peter Bose of Miso Film. It first reached Danish cinemas in October 2021 before Netflix acquired international distribution rights and brought it to global audiences in March 2022.
At the center of the film is one of the most painful chapters in Danish wartime memory. It portrays the real-life tragedy of Operation Carthage, a British air raid that went catastrophically wrong in Copenhagen during the final months of World War II. One of the Mosquito bombers in the first wave struck a tall lamppost, causing it to crash near a school roughly 1.6 km from the intended target. Two aircraft in the second wave mistook the burning structure as the successfully struck Gestapo headquarters and dropped their bombs on the Institut Jeanne d’Arc instead, killing 86 children and 19 adults, and wounding dozens more. It is a tragedy that still registers as an open wound in Danish cultural memory.
The film follows the intersecting lives of several Copenhagen residents whose stories collide on that morning. Three children, Henry, Eva, and Rigmor, played by Bertram Bisgaard, Ella Josephine Lund Nilsson, and Ester Birch Beck, anchor the story alongside a young nun played by Fanny Bornedal, the director’s daughter, and a conflicted Danish collaborator named Frederik played by Alex Høgh Andersen, widely recognized internationally for his role as Ivar the Boneless in ‘Vikings’. Bornedal’s film follows classic disaster movie structure, threading together several story arcs that are destined to collide on that fateful day in the final months of the war.
The response from viewers discovering it now is striking in its intensity. Many are calling it one of the most emotionally powerful films they have seen, with strong reactions circulating online. The comparison to ‘Saving Private Ryan’ keeps appearing in viewer discussions, a benchmark that speaks to how visceral and unsparing the film’s depiction of civilian suffering feels.
The film’s critical reception reflects a work that earns its emotional weight honestly. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a perfect score among critics and a 90% audience rating. It received 11 nominations at the Robert Awards, Denmark’s equivalent of the Oscars, winning Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Design, and also earned nominations for Best Film and Best Original Screenplay. Those recognitions point to a production with genuine ambition and craft behind its difficult subject matter.
The film brings forth the catastrophic collateral damage caused during Operation Carthage while deliberately avoiding any blame game, instead emphasizing the effect of war on innocent lives. That moral restraint is part of what makes it so quietly devastating. If you’ve already watched ‘The Shadow in My Eye’, share in the comments whether the comparison to ‘Saving Private Ryan’ holds up for you, or whether Bornedal’s film cuts even deeper.
