Conclave’s Ed Berger on Netflix’s ‘wake-up call’ to film industry

Patrick Melrose and Conclave director Ed Berger has said Netflix acted as a “wake-up call” to the wider film industry and talked up Hollywood’s appetite for international movies.

Berger, who founded his label Nine Hours three years ago, described his experience of directing Netflix hit All Quiet On The Western Front as being “singularly great” and said the streamer had disrupted a “complacent” business.

Speaking at MIA in Rome, the Ballad Of A Small Player director said: “We thrive in competition and so does the movie industry, we needed Netflix to wake up and disrupt things.

“We had been complacent.. then they came in and said, ‘we do this differently’. And now maybe there is a period when it is the other way round - the movie business has been inspired by streamers, it’s woken up.”

Berger, who has also worked on TV shows including Your Honor and The Terror, said streamers had been “additive” to the more traditional film distribution industry.

“They’re all additive - and my experience on All Quiet [On The Western Front] with Netflix was singularly great. It was just before Covid and they were brave enough to give us a considerable amount of money that we couldn’t have raised otherwise. They saved the film and were incredibly supportive.”

Berger admitted “being afraid” of handing his movie to the streamer - as opposed to working with smaller with international sales houses - and had asked for assurances from Netflix.

“I wanted assurances from them around how they would release the movie but they basically just said, we’ll trust the movie. If it’s great we’ll support it, if it’s not, we won’t.”

Berger, who has most recently been directing Brad Pitt in The Riders, questioned whether “every movie made should be in a theatre” and also spoke of Hollywood’s embrace of international film.

“The big difference in growing up in Germany is that it’s a small country in the world thinking they’re a big country, but with a very strong business that doesn’t have a sense of needing to venture out. It is self-contained.

“When you grow up in Europe the thing we’re told is that Hollywood will take you, then drop you and it’s just big movies - but it’s utterly untrue. It is perhaps our envy. I’ve never met so many move lovers there.”

Berger pointed to his low budget 2014 film Jack, which helped propel the director’s career more than a decade ago.

“The people who turned for that screening were international - they were from the BBC, Channel 4 Films, all the Americans. It was a tiny $500,000 movie but they were so interested to see the next thing, they were hungry for it and that taught me about the passion of movie making.”