Felix Kammerer Is All Quiet on the Western Front’s Secret Weapon

With nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, director Edward Berger‘s big screen adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, has become an unexpected contender in the 2023 Oscar race. This German import is the fourth film version of the World War I story, and undoubtedly the most brutally unflinching. But for all its cinematic grandeur and dogged depiction of the horror of the French-German front line battle, it’s the performance of newcomer Felix Kammerer that makes the film such a painfully personal experience.