All Quiet On The Western Front: The making of the German anti-war epic that has taken awards season by surprise

In 1930, the first film adaptation of All Quiet On The Western Front took home the Oscar for best picture.

Erich Maria Remarque’s unflinching anti-war story, based on his own traumatic experiences of the First World War after being conscripted into the Imperial German Army at the age of 18, had first been serialised in a newspaper two years earlier, before being published as a novel in 1929.

Almost 100 years later, the latest epic is in the running at the Oscars once again, after triumphing at the BAFTAs with seven wins – breaking the record for the most awards won by a foreign language film. At the Academy Awards, it is shortlisted for nine gongs in total, including best picture.

While the 1930 film was in English, the new adaptation is in German and was released on Netflix in 2022 after years of planning. It has been 16 years since Scottish-born filmmaker Lesley Paterson – who also happens to be a champion triathlete – and producer Ian Stokell first secured the rights.

The film tells the story of a young German soldier on the Western Front in the First World War, and the original book remains the best-selling German novel of all time.

Speaking to Sky News, Paterson said the themes of the story still being relevant today made it so important. “I really think it’s the strong themes of the betrayal of a youthful generation,” she said. “And that is as potent now as ever.

“It kind of doesn’t matter which country it’s about in many ways. But of course, seeing it from what we know as the enemy’s perspective is really powerful and really strong.”

After years of struggling to get the screenplay turned into a film, German producers Edward Berger and Malte Grunert were brought on board three years ago to bring the project to life.

A different perspective

“It’s been a long gestating project,” Paterson said. “We were so taken aback by the novel, the beauty of it, the telling it from the other perspective. When we got Malte and Edward on board… that’s when it really took off and it became a German-speaking, authentic story.”

The cast of All Quiet On The Western Front includes several well-respected German actors, including Albrecht Schuch and Daniel Bruhl. However, the lead of Paul Baumer is played by a newcomer, 27-year-old Austrian actor Felix Kammerer.

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Kammerer said he was very aware of the significance of the work when he took on the role.

“It’s the most printed German novel on the planet,” he told Sky News. “And now you have the chance and the responsibility to bring this story to screen for another time. That’s quite a responsibility to have on your shoulders.”

‘120,000 square metres of mud and trenches’

Berger and Grunert were determined to make the film authentic, creating an environment on set that captured both the physical and psychological effects of war on soldiers in the trenches. The filmmakers created an authentic no-man’s land, including barbed wire, bomb craters, animal carcasses and corpses.

“It felt very realistic,” Kammerer said. “You get told a lot of stories about a set, but then you finally arrive there and you see 120,000 square metres of mud and trenches and suddenly you are in it. And that’s unbelievable.”

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He said there were times when filming became emotional for the cast and crew. “I mean, we all were in tears,” he said. One scene in particular, he added, led to “a collective mourning for hours because it was just so hard for all of us to go through that over and over and over again”.

Win or lose at the Oscars, Kammerer says the film is about more than just the two hours or so that you see on screen. Just over a year on from the start of the war in Ukraine, he says there is a deeper meaning. “We are doing a film not just for entertainment, but maybe to show the world what is going on, and what we should really think about.”

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