The film with this awards season's most unexpected trajectory may be "All Quiet on the Western Front," an adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's 1928 German-language novel set during World War I. After premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and launching on Netflix in October, the film went on to become the first German-language film nominated for the Oscar for best picture. In all, the film brought in nine Academy Award nominations, making it the third most-nominated non-English-language film in Oscars history, behind only "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Roma."
The film also came away as the big winner at Sunday's BAFTA awards, winning seven, including best film, director and adapted screenplay — more than any other non-English-language film in BAFTA history.
Set from spring of 1917 to the end of the war in November 1918, the film — the first time Remarque's antiwar classic has been adapted for the screen in its original German — follows teenager Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer, in his screen debut) as he enters the army as an enthusiastic recruit and quickly becomes disillusioned by the horrors of the brutal, futile fighting he encounters. Soldiers such as he are expendable pawns to officers safe from the battlefield and who demand the fighting continue even as armistice is only hours away.
