Out in theaters today is Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s (A Hijacking) latest film, A War, a humanistic exploration of the personal and psychological struggles of soldiers. Set in Denmark and Afghanistan, the film stars Pilou Asbæk as a company commander accused of committing a war crime under duress. The consequences of his actions in the field are felt not just by him, but by his wife and kids back home. War movie sensationalism is cast aside in favor of introspective complexity in this unique, exceptional take on a Hollywood genre that’s run cold as of late. Lindholm’s use of real veterans gives his film a layer of realism that heightens the drama in a powerful, sobering way.

I spoke to Lindholm about the film and his experience making it, which is out in theaters now.

There’s a lot of moral and emotional complexity to your movie. It’s a bit challenging in that way, and it’s also about war, which makes it even trickier to market to big audiences. That being said, how does it feel to be nominated for an Oscar? That recognition will obviously garner the film a considerable amount of attention and ensure an international audience.
I mean, we are enjoying every second of it. This movie started out with me writing the first word in a blank document, then reaching out and meeting all these Danish veterans that served in Afghanistan and meeting Afghan refugees. It was never the aim to have international success and actually be nominated for an Oscar and reach this large an audience. But nevertheless, we’re here now. For me to make those phone calls to the refugees, to the veterans, telling them, “You didn’t know whether I was going to do a good film or a bad film. You had no idea. But you all were loyal and shared bravely your experiences with me. To be able to share this with them is just amazing. A lot of the soldiers who were in the film are flying out here to party with me after the Oscars. That’s basically what I’m looking forward to. [laughs]

The film will be reaching a worldwide audience now with the Oscar recognition. But as you eluded to, the most important audience, perhaps, are the veterans who were brave enough to work with you on this movie and share their stories. What was it like screening the movie for them?
Oh, that’s always the most scary part, you know? I’ve made films now for ten years and I’m kind of getting used to the fact that it’s nerve-racking to know the critics are going to watch it and that the reviews are coming out and all that. But in this case it’s even harder because the witnesses are the men and women, the soldiers. To have them view it…I can’t describe how nervous [I was]. I was walking around for two hours not knowing where to go. Luckily, in this case, everybody was very pleased. We see now that the movie also translates well to the international veterans community. In that way, we feel great that we’ve been able to be loyal to the reality we’ve portrayed.

Most of the veterans I’ve met are very humble, almost shy to share their wartime stories. For you to find this group of soldiers who were so open about their experiences is incredible.
I never asked them any questions. I sat down and listened. When I start a conversation with one of these soldiers, I’d never ask, “How was it?” and so on. It’s technical questions, like “Why do you enter a compoound like that?” To get them speaking about it from a professional point of view. It’s their pride. They know this. They’ve rehearsed it so many times. By being loyal to that and wanting to understand I guess opened them up to understand that I was not there to be a parasite. I actually wanted to understand the reality. Slowly, when everybody starts to feel comfortable, they will start to share. Then it’s my job to be the editor and find the bits and pieces I can use. But I never sit down and ask emotional questions about the war. I know that if anyone came in and asked me about the most vulnerable place in me, I would shut down and not talk about it. If that’s where the conversation ends with them, that’s okay becasue I can use the technical stuff the film. How do you handle a gun? How do you talk to the locals? Understanding that will help me portray it.

I met the first soldier at a wedding and, as we know, magical things can happen when you’re a little drunk. Not too drunk, but just a little. At this wedding I had had a couple of drinks and I ended up at the bar with another man who had been in Iraq three times and once in Afghanistan. He just started to talk about how it was to be home and wanting to raise a family. He was the first generation of being a professional soldier in Denmark ever. That opened up a conversation we continued throughout the next few years. He invited in people he served with. Him giving approval to me helped the other guys open up as well.

I have a certain reverence and respect for soldiers when I’m around them. They’ve done things I can’t imagine. There must be a great pressure to tell their stories authentically but does that impede on the artistic process in any way? You are a storyteller with a vision at the end of the day.
The reason I do these stories, is because I want to show these stories we often see in the news from a human point of view. I don’t want to be political, I don’t want to be judgmental. I just want to understand what it is to be human in that situation. The film I did before this one is called A Hijacking, about Danish sailors being captured by Somali pirates. I don’t meet these people as me being a civilian and them being soldiers. Me being a civilian and them being heroes. I always just try to meet them as human beings and try to relate to what they’re going through. This is where we’re equal. I think this is the most important thing we can do as human beings. There are a lot of points where we’re different. All of us. But where we’re the same is the most important. That’s where the audience can relate to these guys. Even though it’s not comparable, I live a life as a filmmaker where I have to leave my kids and my wife for a long time sometimes to do my films. I know the feeling of not being able to connect with them on a proper phone line. Then I can chip in, and the soldiers will be able to relate to that. It’s not a consequence of being a soldier; it’s a consequence of being away from your family. My point of view as an artist is to make a film about human beings in a conflict instead of making a film about a conflict.

What’s unique about the Danish perspective on war?
The unique thing about our perspective on the war in Iraq and, in this case, Afghanistan, is that it’s the first war we’ve fought since the second World War. In the second World War, we fought for five hours and then gave up. As you can imagine, it has defined my generation in that we’re very new to this. In many ways, we are in a post-Vietnam phase in our country right now. We are not used to being a warfaring country yet. I guess that gives us a naive perspective of what’s going on. I still feel I need to confront stuff that a lot of other nations have accepted. I think the Danish perspective is that we’re new at this. We’re still learning. Therefore, we may be asking questions other nations have started to forget to ask.

There’s a pursuit of authentic truth in your productions. I like that you wanted to reference reality in your work, not other war movies. What are the benefits of this approach to storytelling?
There’s a contradiction here. I’m an educated screenwriter. I realized quite fast that I’m not amused by my own imagination. I find it boring. If I have to sit for two hours and make stuff up, I’m like, “I can’t do this.” But if I connect with the world, that’s interesting. I love to connect with these people. One of the big benefits is to share this and try to understand the world. It helps me on a personal level to constantly confront my perspective of the world. At the same time, you can say that, by sharing, this is not my project in the world but our project, all the people who have chipped in to make this film possible. I’m a team player. I’m a soccer player from childhood. I love to be on a team. I feel the most creative and most energized when I’m surrounded by people who want the same thing as me, whatever we’re doing.

This might be a little complex, but every human being in this world is trained from the day we are born and on to understand the world around us. We all enter new rooms every day. We all always spend a second when we meet a stranger to feel if this person is sad or angry or depressed or whatever. We don’t need any time to actually relate to other people. With moviemaking, it seems we think the audience has left that ability outside the cinema. We tell them all kinds of information to make them understand who we’re dealing with. I often get frustrated with being over-informed by all kinds of details about characters in films. I just want to watch a film where I can relate to people on a human level like I relate to people on a human level on the streets or in a restaurant. I remember watching the American documentary Restrepo and suddenly relating to these guys on a human level. I especially remember the scene where one of the soldiers has an anxiety attack because one of the other soldiers is shot and killed. In the middle of the firefight, he breaks down. For me, that’s proof of human life in war. I wanted to portray that and not just make references to other films. When I’m seeing explosions in war films, they’re always way too big. When I’m watching explosion

When I’m seeing explosions in war films, they’re always way too big. When I’m watching explosions from a helmet cam, I see a lot of dirt and sand in the air. And then silence. And then the screaming starts. The timing of reality is slightly different. I found it more interesting and more beneficial to try to approach the reality of it. I think our human ear and human eye is somehow educated to understand what is real and what is not real. I want to invite people into a natural portrayal of war instead of being another fascinated film about war.

I remember writing essays about Robert F. Kennedy when I was a kid and studying his life for school. It’s the first research assignment I can remember having, and I must have been fascinated by it because I don’t remember much from my childhood. Fast forward about two decades, and there I am, astonished to be sitting across from the youngest of the late Kennedy’s eleven children, Rory Kennedy, whose new film, Last Days in Vietnam, covers a war her father felt should have been ended much sooner. I listened intently.

“He really felt we should get out of Vietnam,” the 45-year-old documentarian said of her father. “Some of my earliest memories seem to involve Vietnam in one capacity or another.” Inspired by her early fascination with Vietnam, she made Last Days, which recounts the final 24 hours of the war, when the North Vietnamese army was closing in on Saigon and U.S. troops were ordered to evacuate only U.S. citizens. Several American soldiers chose to disobey orders, however, risking their lives to help sneak South Vietnamese citizens and their families who were helpful to the U.S. military out of the country to safety. Through interviews with these intrepid men and some South Vietnamese citizens who were left behind, the film highlights an inspiring, encouraging moment in one of the country’s most regretful points in history.

I spoke with Kennedy during her visit to San Francisco about how she found the stories of these soldiers, her biggest challenges in making the film feel cohesive, having screaming matches in the editing room, the stories’ morally complex nature, finding the film’s rare archival footage, how we can learn to not repeat the same mistakes in our engagement with ISIS, advice for young filmmakers, and more.

The war in Vietnam has been covered in documentaries from so many different ways, but you’ve managed to find a new angle to approach the subject. How did you find this story?

I’ve always been fascinated by Vietnam and from a very young age have been aware of it. My father, Robert F. Kennedy, ran his last campaign in 1968 really because he felt we should get out of Vietnam. Some of my earliest memories seem to involve Vietnam in one capacity or another. As we were getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan, I thought that maybe it might be a good time to look back at the final days of Vietnam and see if there might be some lessons to be learned about what happened during those last days and what’s happening now. I also felt that we were coming up on the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, so I thought it was a good time to look back.

The story of these brave men is so intrinsically dramatic. It makes for great movie material.

It’s an organically dramatic story, which was also appealing to me. When we’re making these documentaries, so much of the time you have to construct the story, figure out what it is, construct the arc of the story. [laughs] This one was kind of laid out for us on a platter. It was pretty evident in the first few days of research that there was a film there. Then it was a question of what angle to take and where the focus of the film should be. It was very evident that there was a dramatic story to be told that did have relevance.

Almost every documentarian I’ve spoken to tells me that their biggest challenge was finding their story and figuring out, like you said, what the arc of it should be. You had a bit of a leg up here, with the story already being so dramatic and cinematic. You were ahead of the game in that respect, so where did you focus the extra time and energy?

I was searching for the characters to help tell that story. That was a challenge, though we ended up finding a lot of fantastic people who told firsthand accounts. The archive, tracking down the visual elements of the story, was also quite a challenge. I wanted to try to minimize any reenactments or animations in this film. Not that I’m against those things…

The animations you do have are great.

When we use them, which is sparingly, I think the do what they need to do. I think that overall, you’re in the footage of the moment, so it helps transport audiences to April 1975 in Saigon and hopefully helps them have the experience of a ticking clock and what’s going to happen next in the moment, with the characters. I would say one of the bigger challenges of this film was the edit. Even though the story was pretty obvious, the this story, which a complex one involving situating people in Vietnam and giving them a sense of what they needed to know about Vietnam. We also had to make it relevant because you’re dealing with younger generations who may have not studied Vietnam and older generations who might know a lot of the backstory. We also never use a narrator or historians or so-called “experts”. It’s exclusively told through people who were there and had firsthand knowledge. They become your narrators, and we didn’t want to interrupt the flow of events by using cards. That’s just challenging. It just is. [laughs] You’re jumping from the water to the embassy to the airport. Then, you have to situate people and orient them.

There’s so much information delivered in the movie that it’s like tap-dancing over laser beams; one misstep and the audience might shut off.

And then you have to figure out what that misstep is. You watch it in rough cut stage. I was in the edit room with my writers Mark Bailey and Keven McAlester, who are both terrific, and my editor Don Kleszy. It was a great collaboration, and we all had a lot of contributions to all of those decisions you make. Lots of yelling and screaming matches as to what happens next and how you structure it. It was great to have such a team together.

The stories of these men are so morally complex. They were presented with situations in which the right thing to do isn’t always so clear. I couldn’t help but put myself in their shoes and wonder what I would have done under such duress, and how I would reckon with decisions I wasn’t so sure were the right ones.. Did you ever try to put yourself inside their place and go to that dark place?

It’s so hard for me to imagine being in their position exactly. I’d have to know how to drive a helicopter, you know? [laughs] There are so many experiences I would have to have to get to where they were. But of course, the moral dilemma they faced I can identify with more. We all like to hope that we’d make the right decision, but it’s difficult when you’re in the military and taught not to make decisions on your own. One of the things that’s amazing is that there are all these disparate stories that are all taking place around or in Saigon, and none of them were talking to each other. But they all came to the same conclusion, which is, “We can’t just leave. We have to help these guys.” That’s an amazing phenomenon, really. I think the war in Vietnam was a dark moment in our nation’s history that not many Americans are proud of, but you see these acts of these individuals and how they sacrificed their jobs and arguably their lives, and were going against U.S. policy. And yet, they still did it. It makes you proud of them. Not necessarily proud of America, but proud of these Americans.

Have audiences been coming away from the film encouraged by these stories?

Yeah, that’s certainly an emotion people feel when they leave the film. Listen, it’s all within the context of a larger abandonment, right? I don’t think the film skirts around that larger issue. I don’t know that audiences are skipping out of the theater all bliss-ed out. [laughs] But people have certainly expressed a feeling of pride in these individuals.

I think this film can help us and our government not repeat the same mistakes we made back then.

That would be nice! [laughs] When I went into it, I didn’t have that particular goal in mind. I wanted to tell this story, and I felt that there were lessons to be learned; what we did in Vietnam, what worked and didn’t work, the larger questions about our responsibilities to people left behind. What happens to the messengers and the tailors and the cooks and the translators and all the people who work with us when we leave Afghanistan. What happens to them? They face greater vulnerability because of their association with Americans. I think it’s important to ask those questions and have a sense of the answers as we expand our engagements to ISIS. What is our goal? What is the cost of war? What happens to the people who get left behind? In April 1975, there were very few good options available. It’s a reminder that we should be asking these questions before we get into the wars. At a certain point, especially if you don’t win, you’re limited in your options.

What are the rarest pieces of footage you have in the film?

We were really lucky, because I had a great archive team who went into the NBC and ABC and CBS archive houses and found the source material. Throughout the film there is footage people have never seen before. We were particularly lucky with the story about the U.S.S. Kirk, which plays a significant role in the movie, where I was telling a guy who had helped uncover the story of the Kirk about the film, and he had just talked to a sailor from the Kirk who had told him that he was up in his attic and came across a box of Super 8 undeveloped footage of the Kirk in 1975. I was in California and he was on the East Coast and wouldn’t FedEx it to me, so I flew him out and we developed it, and it was a treasure trove. The U.S.S. Kirk, the Armitage story, the sequence with the ships overflowing with people; that’s all from this footage.

There’s a remarkable moment in the film where as a man is saying, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but we were pushing helicopters over the side of the boat,” we see actual footage of them pushing helicopters off the boat. It’s amazing.

[laughs] Yeah, it’s an amazing moment.

As is the case for every documentary project, the work is only halfway done once the film is finished. How have you enjoyed your time since completing the film, screening it for audiences, doing interviews like this and appearing on TV shows?

I love it. It takes a certain amount of energy, and you’ve got to really love the story. It requires working on all cylinders. I am enormously grateful to be on this path. I learn something new almost every day that I’m doing this work. I really love and honor it, and I think it’s a great group of people who make documentaries, and I love the association with that group. I love what I do. It’s such a spectrum of experiences making a film, and what I love is that in that range, I enjoy almost every part of it. I enjoy developing an idea; I enjoy doing interviews and identifying the characters; I enjoy the edit, which is always very, very challenging. I’m always convinced at some point that this is a terrible project and I should have never done it and no one’s going to watch it because it’s horrible. It’s a roller coaster, and that’s the low point, but it has always so far gone to a high point. It’s great to be able to share the movie and see audiences’ responses to it. I enjoy talking to people like yourself who have enjoyed the film and who are smart and engaged and care about it and have different ways of looking at it.

I think every creative person–whether they’re creating a film, a book, a song, whatever–hits that low point you were talking about, where the project is so, so far from what you want it to be that you want to give up. For me, after I hit rock bottom like that, there’s always a point that follows where something clicks and you get hopeful. Can you remember what that point was?

I remember that point for my previous film, Ethel. We nailed the open of the film, and that set the tone for the rest of it, which was hard to figure out before that point. This film was more of a slog in terms of building it all so that the entire film worked. We could build certain scenes, and I could see how those worked, but it was still hard to make it feel like the overall story would hold together. There were so many stories and no narration. I always talk about this metaphor, where you bake bread and put it in the oven and hope it rises, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, you watch the film and you’re like, “Gah! It’s terrible!” or you watch it and you’re like, “Oh! It works!” For this film, it was like every little thing had to be put together, and then it finally worked. But it wasn’t until the very end where it felt like it was really a film.

We finished a second, maybe third rough cut of the film in May, and then we took the summer off, which I’ve never done before. Everybody was like, “The film’s solid! We maybe just need to make a few tweaks when we get back.” We came back in September and watched it and were like, “Okay. We need to redo this.” We had six weeks, and we made a lot of pretty radical changes to it, and it turned it from an okay film to a much, much better film. For all of us to have that distance and reengage it was great.

Any advice for young documentary filmmakers?

It’s a life of endeavor. When I was starting making documentaries, it cost $80,000 to have a camera that was broadcast quality and editing systems were $200,000 to $300,000. We had to edit linearly…

Imagine that for this film!

[laughs] I know! There’s so much opportunity now, where you can pick up a phone now and make a film out of it, and it’s arguably broadcast quality. It really opens up the field to a lot of young people who may not have the resources, but have the wherewithal and ingenuity to pursue their calling. There’s also value to working with a production company or with people whose work you admire. Do internships and assistant work to figure out how the overall industry works. That’s important in terms of being practical about how you make a film. If you can just go out there and start making them, that’s a fantastic experience.