Somewhere Near Nijmegen

Somewhere Near Nijmegen is a 2024 Irish World War II short film written and directed by brothers Kealan Ryan and Mark T. Ryan, who also star. Backed by Screen Ireland and set around Operation Market Garden, the roughly half-hour film follows three American paratroopers downed over Holland and the German infantrymen sent to find them, resolving into an explicitly anti-war ending. It won best film at the Underground Cinema International Film Festival.

Short-form war filmmaking has to buy scale it cannot shoot. That puts the burden on FX simulation — muzzle flashes, tracer fire, artillery bursts, smoke and dirt-debris pyro — and on CG aircraft and digital environments that place a handful of performers inside a 1944 front line. Matte painting and set extension hide the modern Dutch and Irish countryside beyond the frame edge, while rotoscoping, crowd augmentation and rig removal clean up what the camera caught by accident, with compositing binding practical squibs to their digital continuation. Terminal FX contributed visual effects and animation to Somewhere Near Nijmegen alongside its wider film, television and commercial work.