Edward Berger: Last News

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.

Variety is still celebrating the winners who have graced our covers, spoke on our podcasts and participated in Actors on Actors this season. Revisit our best coverage and interviews with the big winners below. Variety covers: Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”), best actor: Brendan Fraser’s Triumphant Comeback: How Playing a 600-Pound Gay Man in ‘The Whale’ Resurrected His Career Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), best actress: Women Do It Better: Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh on Creating Iconic Characters From Roles Written for Men

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.

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.

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.

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.  

Todd Gilchrist editor Even with predecessors such as  “Paths of Glory,” “A Very Long Engagement,” “1917” and of course Lewis Milestone’s 1930 best picture winner of the same name, director Edward Berger’s adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s bestseller “All Quiet on the Western Front” conveys the meat-grinder brutality — the violence, the blood, and the mud — of trench warfare unlike almost any film in the history of the medium.  “These kids are chewed up by the merciless war machine,” says Berger. “They sign up for this war full of hopes and ideals, but very quickly they realize that they have lost everything in the mud, especially their innocence and their youth.”

Jon Burlingame It’s anybody’s game: this is a rare year when any of the five original-score nominees could win the Oscar. Two of the nominees are previous winners, two more are past nominees; only one is a newcomer, and it’s a three-man ensemble. Four films are period pieces: an admired German-language war film, a character study set against the Irish civil war, an epic of late 1920s Hollywood, and a coming-of-age story for a young filmmaker in the ‘50s and ‘60s; the fifth is a wild, anarchic tale of a Chinese American family that saves the universe. And the nominees are:

EXCLUSIVE: FilmNation Entertainment and ZQ Entertainment have finalized a multi-year feature film development fund deal.

EXCLUSIVE: Members of the first ever Berlinale Series Award jury have predicted that TV awards could soon rival film at the world’s major festivals.

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.

Deadline has launched the streaming site for its Contenders Film: The Nominees awards-season event, which took place on Saturday and highlighted the cast and creatives behind 12 films that have been Oscar-nominated this year.

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.

German language film All Quiet On The Western Front was the big winner at the EE BAFTAs, scooping a total of seven prizes.The Netflix anti-war epic, directed by German filmmaker Edward Berger and based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque, scooped top gongs including best film and best director. It broke the record for the highest number of Baftas for a foreign language film previously held by Italian coming-of-age drama Cinema Paradiso, which claimed five in 1988.Taking to the stage at the climax of the event at London’s Royal Festival Hall, cinematographer James Friend said the film showed how a generation of young German men were “poisoned by right-wing nationalistic propaganda” and he stressed that the film’s message remains “relevant” nearly a century on.

All Quiet on the Western Front became the big winner tonight at BAFTA, taking not just the awards for Best Film and Best Director, but a total of 7 prizes out of its 14 nominations.

Refresh for latest…: It’s BAFTA Sunday here in London with the annual BAFTA Film Awards ceremony about to kick off at the Royal Festival Hall on an improbably clement evening. Richard E Grant is hosting the ceremony tonight, taking the baton from last year’s emcee Rebel Wilson, and we will be updating the list of winners live, so check back for updates.