Just a week before the 2023 Academy Award nominations are announced, a new major contender may have emerged. All Quiet on the Western Front, which was filmed in and around Prague during the first half of 2021, has dominated the 2023 BAFTA nominations with a nod in a total of 14 categories.

An acclaimed adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s WWI anti-war novel, based on the writer’s own experiences in the trenches, All Quiet on the Western Front premiered last October on Netflix to wide acclaim. Filmed multiple times in English, it’s the first German-language adaptation of the book.

All Quiet on the Western Front’s BAFTA tally includes nominations for Best Picture, Director (Edward Berger), Adapted Screenplay (Berger, Ian Stokell and Leslie Patterson), Supporting Actor (Albrecht Schuch), Original Score (Volker Bertelmann), Casting (Simon Bär), Cinematography (James Friend), and Editing (Sven Budelmann), Production Design (Christian M. Goldbreck, Ernestine Hipper), Costume Design (Lisy Christl), and Makeup and Hair (Heike Merker).

Local artisans are also represented through All Quiet on the Western Front’s nominations for Sound (Lars Ginzsel, Frank Kruse, Viktor Prášil and Markus Stemler) and visual effects (Markus Frank, Kamil Jafar, Viktor Müller and Frank Petzold). Müller’s studio UPP Prague worked on the film’s post-production effects.

All Quiet on the Western Front was primarily filmed in the Czech Republic two years ago, with locations in Prague and other cities filling in for those in WWI-era Germany. Its wartime trenches were recreated in rural locations outside of the Czech capital.

The Netflix production has become the first movie since 2010’s The King’s Speech to score 14 BAFTA nominations. It has also tied 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the most nominations by a non-English-language film in BAFTA history.

Held since 1949, the British Academy Film Awards honor achievement in cinema from the UK and worldwide. In recent years, they have often been seen as an indicator of potential trends in Academy Awards nominations and results.

This year’s Oscar favorites like Top Gun: Maverick and The Fablemans failed to score a BAFTA nomination for Best Picture, with All Quiet on the Western Front, The Banshees of Inisherin, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Elvis, and Tár taking the five nomination slots.

While All Quiet on the Western Front was widely expected to score an Oscar nomination for Best International Film as potentially some of the technical categories, the BAFTA nominations have opened it up to competition in a number of other categories.

After the BAFTA nominations were announced yesterday, Variety shot All Quiet on the Western Front into its top 10 for its Best Picture Oscar predictions, where it now stands at number 7. It also appears among Variety’s top 5 predictions for Best Editing, Production Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound, Original Score, and International Film.

The 2023 Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday, January 24. This year’s BAFTA award ceremony will be held on Sunday, February 19.
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