Run time: 147 mins

The First World War is reimagined as a symphony of mud, teen angst and terrible beauty in this stunning German-language retelling of Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel.

Film tells the story of 17-year-old German recruit Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer), across the span of the conflit. He starts out as a naïve adolescent who lies about his age to sign up. But as soon as he reaches the frontline he finds himself caught in a back-and-forth tussle over a few hundred metres of blood-soaked mud; numbed by hunger and trauma as, one by one, his friends are slaughtered.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a substantial, serious work, acted with urgency and focus and with battlefield sequences whose digital fabrications are expertly melded into the action. It never fails to do justice to its subject matter, though is perhaps conscious of its own classic status. Much like 1917, the film is a technical marvel; depicting the horrors of the Great War in a visually slick and cinematic way; this results in a tense, taut, and gripping experience.