Interview: ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Producer Malte Grunert on the Importance of the German-Language Adaptation

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) is the latest adaptation of the novel turned 1930-Best Picture winning film, and it also the first film adaptation to be told in its original German language. Distributed by Netflix and currently nominated for nine Academy Awards, producer Malte Grunert spoke with Awards Radar about the introduction of the project and working with Director Edward Berger during the production process.

Grunert talks about the important opportunity to adapt the film in its native German language and the honor of the film being nominated for awards at the highest level, something he and the team did not expect when going into production of the film.

“To me it seemed like an obvious blind spot that this had never been made in the German language, it’s a seminal book that is also so important because it is a very German perspective on wat and the German perspective is quite different from an American or a British perspective…, it is not a heroic one, it’s full of guilt and shame and regret and responsibility to talk about the past so that it may not repeat itself.”

Grunert also discusses the containment of the film’s budget as well as the message of the film and how it connects to current events in unexpected ways.