Director Edward Berger Teases New Papal Drama ‘Conclave’ On Set, Hours After ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ BAFTA Haul

Damon Wise
·4 min read
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Edward Berger says he didn’t realize the BAFTAs were going his way until the final award of the night, when Best Film became the seventh trophy to add to his film’s haul. If he’d known that All Quiet on the Western Front, his adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s First World War novel would do so well, he might have taken the next day off. Instead, he left the Netflix party at around 2am for a flight to Rome, in time for a 9am call at the historic Cinecittà Studios and a full day of shooting on his follow-up.

An adaptation of Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, Conclave’s star-studded cast boasts Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Lucian Msamati, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini. Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, who is thrown in at the deep end when the Pope unexpectedly dies. Charged with organizing an election to find the Catholic Church a new leader, Lawrence must deal with warring factions within the Vatican while at the same time questioning his own candidacy and the attraction of the power that comes with the post.

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Says Berger, “It’s about a spiritual journey of doubt, which Ralph’s character has, but it’s also about the election of a Pope in contemporary times. The main character’s journey attracted me, and also the fact that it’s an interesting story about vying for power and the power games that go on behind the scenes.”

Inviting Deadline to Rome just a couple of days after All Quiet‘s BAFTA success, Berger will today be working on Stage 15. The big giveaway is a cavalcade of cardinals, all 118 of them, as they mill around in the corridor, waiting to shoot the day’s scene. Up in his office, Berger gestures through the window to the next building along. “There’s the Fellini stage, where he always shot,” he says. “There’s a plaque there that says, ‘If any place is home, this is it.’ It’s much more his home than his house was.”

The director has been in Rome since October, and he says the production settled there out of necessity. “There are a lot of exteriors, and we need the Roman architecture,” he explains. “Obviously, if you’re only working in the studio, you can go anywhere. But also, we have to recreate the Vatican, because you cannot shoot inside the Vatican. We scouted a lot of countries—Hungary and Prague—and we just felt that the texture of Rome gives us the architecture that we needed for the film as a whole.”

For this reason, Stage 15 has become “basically a reconstruction of the Sistine Chapel in real size. We’re six days into this set, and we’re filming the voting process.” That must be quite a tall order, to recreate the Sistine Chapel. How did he do that? “I didn’t do it, so I have no clue,” he laughs. “But it looks great. You’ll see. The ceiling obviously is not there. It’ll be CG. But everything else up to the first floor is built.”

Edward Berger
Edward Berger poses in the Winners Room at the BAFTA Film Awards.

Conclave will still be shooting come the Oscars on 13 March, with All Quiet on the Western Front’s nine nominations coming under fresh scrutiny post-Bafta, but Berger doesn’t seem too concerned about that. Doesn’t he need a break? He shrugs. “I finished editing All Quiet… about 15 or 16 months ago, in November [2021], and then the VFX took till May—it’s a slower process, so it’s not so all-consuming—and then I slowly started Conclave. So, three or four months after I finished All Quiet… I started this movie. There was definitely some time in between.”

And, besides, he adds, “Rome isn’t the worst place to be. You’re away from the family, which is hard, but it’s really nice to experience a different country and work with different people from different countries and get to know the place in a really different way. I still feel like I live at home. I’m just taking two suitcases and coming to stay for a few months.”

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