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.
In accepting the International Feature Oscar, director Edward Berger thanked his collaborators and family, and had special praise for an emotional All Quiet star Felix Kammerer saying, “This was your first movie and you carried us on your shoulders. Without you, none of us would be here.”
The last time Erich Maria Remarque’s classic anti-war novel was made as a theatrical motion picture was nearly a century ago, and it went on to take home Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. Netflix’s update on the story of the horrors of war is the first time it’s been told in German and from the German point of view.
The film follows Paul (Kammerer), a young German soldier on the Western Front of World War I as he and his comrades experience first-hand how the initial euphoria of war turns into desperation and fear as they fight for their lives, and each other, in the trenches. Daniel Brühl, Albrecht Schuch and Sebastian Hülk also star.
The project had gone through many cast-and-director iterations before it finally came to Berger, who previously told Deadline the big reason to make it “was to go back to the German novel and make a German film out of it.”
All Quiet has won dozens of prizes on its way to the Dolby, most recently scoring seven BAFTAs including Best Film, Director and Film Not in the English Language.
The antiwar movie premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and released October 28 on Netflix. It is a Netflix/Amusement Park Film in co-production with Gunpowder Films in association with Sliding Down Rainbows Entertainment/Anima Pictures Production.
Berger is currently at work on an adaptation of Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, Conclave starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Lucian Msamati, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini.
Other nominees in the International Feature category were Argentina 1985 (Argentina), Close (Belgium), EO (Poland) and The Quiet Girl (Ireland).