How ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Leaned Into Meat Grinder Brutality of Battle Scenes

Last night, director Edward Berger officially became an Oscar-winning filmmaker thanks to the Best International Film win for “All Quiet on the Western Front.” And it doesn’t appear that Berger is going to even stop to take a breath as the filmmaker’s next project has just been announced. According to Deadline, Edward Berger is signed on to direct and produce a new Amazon series, “Helltown,” which will be produced by Robert Downey Jr.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix picked up big wins at the 95th Academy Awards, including the international feature film Oscar for “All Quiet on the Western Front” and its first animated feature film Oscar for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.” Overall, Netflix won six Oscars on Sunday, after receiving 16 total nominations this year. “All Quiet on the Western Front,” directed by Edward Berger, won four Oscars (on nine nominations), picking up the trophies for international feature, cinematography (James Friend), original score (Volker Bertelmann) and production design (Christian M. Goldbeck, Ernestine Hipper). The film — a grim, disquieting adaptation of the famous World War I novel — had dominated the U.K.’s BAFTA Awards with a record-breaking seven wins, including best film, director (Berger), adapted screenplay, cinematography, sound, original score and non-English language film.

Production designer Christian M. Goldbeck gave a shout-out to All Quiet on the Western Front‘s director Edward Berger and his team of APDs following the film’s Oscar win for Best Production Design.

All Quiet on the Western Front scooped the Best International Feature Film Oscar this evening, after earlier taking the Cinematography trophy and then winning for Production Design and Original Score. Such categories in which it is also nominated, including Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay and Sound are still to be unveiled. This is the first time a German title has taken the International Feature prize since 2006’s The Lives of Others. 

German musician Volker Bertelmann nudged out the competition to pick up his first Academy Award Sunday for Netflix’s war epic All Quiet on the Western Front.

James Friend won the Oscar tonight in the Best Cinematography category for his work on Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front, beating out fellow cinematographers Darius Khondji, Mandy Walker, Roger Deakins and Florian Hoffmeister.

Jon Burlingame editor German composer Volker Bertelmann won the original score Oscar Sunday night for his music for the World War I epic “All Quiet on the Western Front.” “By working on a film like that, you are always touched,” Bertelmann said in accepting the honor, referring to the harrowing nature of the film. “Sometimes you have to make the screen very small because there are so many explosions happening.” It is Bertelmann’s first Academy Award. He was previously nominated, under his stage name Hauschka, for his music for the 2016 film “Lion” (co-composed with Dustin O’Halloran). He won the BAFTA for “All Quiet” on Feb. 19.

Todd Gilchrist editor Despite its position as one of the seeming few big-scale “original” sci-fi films to compete with franchises, sequels and reboots for box office real estate, “65” is Frankensteinian at best. Cobbled together from (admittedly some of the best) parts of “Jurassic Park,” “The Descent,” “Armageddon” and more, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ post-“A Quiet Place” level-up too strongly resembles its forebears to break new, much less particularly interesting ground. Yet anchored by another in a series of committed performances from Adam Driver and an ensemble of suitably menacing prehistoric beasts that chase him for just over 90 minutes, Beck and Woods’ adventure delivers requisite thrills even if its creativity seems stuck in the distant cinematic past.

Naman Ramachandran After the triumph of Edward Berger’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” at the BAFTAs, Netflix has revealed a surge in viewership for non-English language titles. New Netflix data shows that in the U.K., viewing for non-English language stories has increased by 90% over the last three years. “All Quiet on the Western Front” is now Netflix’s fourth most popular non-English language film ever, with over 150 million hours viewed since its release on Oct. 14, 2022. It has been on Netflix’s global Top 10 Non-English Film list for 14 weeks and has reached the Top 10 Films in 91 countries, including Germany, the U.K., U.S., Australia, France, Mexico and South Korea.

.“These are big shoes for us to fill with our film. I don’t mean to compare our film to what some of our predecessors went through, but it is very moving to be even remotely connected to this history that “All Quiet” has,” Grunert told TheWrap. “We’ve managed to capture something that is obviously horrific, and we tried to come to what we can only imagine is an emotional truth of our main character, and how it could possibly feel to him,” Grunert said.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Netflix’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” has surpassed over 150 million hours viewed since its release on Oct. 14, 2022. The film, which dominated the BAFTA Awards in London with a record-breaking seven wins, including best film, director (Edward Berger), adapted screenplay, cinematography, sound, original score and non-English language film, climbed up to No. 2 on the global list, according to numbers released by Netflix. Berger’s World War I epic tells Paul’s (Felix Kammerer ) journey from being a young, enthusiastic school boy wanting to join the army to a tired, worn soldier. It has been on the global Top 10 Non-English Film list for 14 weeks and has reached the Top 10 Films in 91 countries, including Germany, the U.K., U.S., Australia, France, Mexico and South Korea.

Tim Gray Senior Vice President Oscar voters rewarded “All Quiet on the Western Front” with nine nominations, including best picture and international film. But aside from the great work seen onscreen, the film is notable for what it doesn’t do. There are no heroic acts, no sense of adventure, no cheering when the enemy dies. It’s a true anti-war film. Producer Malte Grunert says: “There are a lot of things that do not follow the normal dramatic structure that you would expect in a war movie.”  He and director Edward Berger discussed the depiction of violence, since Erich Maria Remarque’s 1927 novel about World War I vividly describes atrocities. “We wanted to keep it violent because a war film has to be. It’s about young boys, just out of school, going to the Western Front and being thrown into violence and pain,” says Grunert. “But we never wanted it to be exploitative. The violence was always to have a purpose, to show the horror through the eyes of our protagonists.”

Edward Berger says he didn’t realize the BAFTAs were going his way until the final award of the night, when Best Film became the seventh trophy to add to his film’s haul. If he’d known that All Quiet on the Western Front, his adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s First World War novel would do so well, he might have taken the next day off. Instead, he left the Netflix party at around 2am for a flight to Rome, in time for a 9am call at the historic Cinecittà Studios and a full day of shooting on his follow-up.

A version of this story about “All Quiet on the Western Front” first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.   The first German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic anti-war novel about World War I, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is second only to “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and tied with “The Banshees of Inisherin” for the most Oscar nominations, nine.

Steven Gaydos Executive VP of Content The power of an important story told with passion and unflinching clarity always transcends the bonds of time. This explains the durability of Shakespeare’s plays when they land in the right hands, and it explains Edward Berger’s adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s fierce anti-war novel, “All Quite on the Western Front,” which is nominated for the best picture Oscar.  Nearly a century ago, director Lewis Milestone triumphed in one of the first Oscar competitions with his Universal Pictures version of the 1928 tome, filmed, remarkably, completely in and around its Hollywood Studio home.   Today, “Front” is registering with voters who are seeing the horrors of war in Europe live and in color as it sadly unfolds again with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  

All Quiet on the Western Front‘s Daniel Bishop and Ozark‘s Dave Chameides and Cristian Trova were named Camera Operator of the Year in film and TV, respectively, by the Society of Camera Operators.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Despite representing Germany at this year’s Academy Awards for best international feature, “All Quiet on the Western Front” writer-director Edward Berger doesn’t feel national pride for the country. “I don’t feel that because of the history,” Berger tells Variety. “I could never say I’m proud to be German. Those words don’t fit into our mouths, and rightly so. I would have a hard time thinking I would represent the country because I can’t speak for the entire country.” On this episode of Variety‘s Awards Circuit Podcast, Berger discusses “All Quiet on the Western Front’s” nine Oscar noms — the second most of the year — and employing the most artisans of any non-English movie in history. Finally, he shares why he feels a responsibility to accurately portray Germany’s role in some of humanity’s most devastating wars. Listen to the full podcast below.

including Best Film, and many are wondering how they can watch the gritty World War I drama.Directed by Edward Berger, whom the British Academy named Best Director, the film is an adaptation of the 1929 novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque.A staple of many academic reading lists, the first English language adaptation of Remarque’s novel was made in 1930. The film netted Lewis Milestone his second Best Director Oscar and won Outstanding Production (later renamed Best Picture).

When I moderated a screening with you and Edward and Daniel Bruhl, I said, “Your music scares the hell out of me,” and the audience applauded. You must have known going into “All Quiet” that you needed something dark and foreboding and a little scary.Absolutely. But when you talk about dark and foreboding, it can easily get into an area where it’s detached suddenly from the movie, because it’s maybe too much horror or too heavy in a way that it doesn’t fit the picture.

All Quiet On The Western Front was the big winner at the 2023 BAFTAs.READ MORE: All the winners from the 2023 BAFTAsThe German-language film was heavily inspired by the anti-war novel of the same name by former German World War One soldier Erich Maria Remarque. It was nominated for fourteen BAFTAs at the 2023 ceremony and ended up winning seven of them.All Quiet On The Western Front won the BAFTA for Film Not In The English Language, Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, Director, Sound and the biggest award of the night – Best Film.This run of awards makes All Quiet On The Western Front the first foreign language film to win more than four BAFTAs.“It’s just incredible,” said producer Malte Grunert while picking up the Best Film prize before talking about how the story of a generation “poisoned by right-wing propaganda into thinking war is an adventure” was as relevant today as it was almost 100 years ago.All Quiet On The Western Front was released last October on Netflix and is still available to watch on the streaming platform.A synopsis for the film reads: “All Quiet on the Western Front tells the gripping story of a young German soldier on the Western Front of World War I.