Hi, guys.
How you doing today?
Yeah, good. You guys?
Yeah, yeah. Good. Good.
Hey, you guys.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, that's where it came from.
It's perfect. Yeah.
One of the films I've seen most in my lifetime.
Exactly.
Okay, so it's a regular movie.
Okay.
Congratulations on such a great film.
And so I watched it last night, and I'm still recovering
from it in a good way.
Not in a bad way. Oh, in a good way.
This way.
I was very gripped
from from the get go.
And obviously it's a very nice horror.
How does it feel to be screening it right there?
Yeah, really excited.
I mean, if everybody feels the same way, it'd be really exciting.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that if we've got a good.
Good horror is a great horror to be sharing a fright.
Yeah. I mean, there's horror elements to it and
and thriller elements as well, sort of mixed mix genre.
And I love that audience that, you know, I've been gone
for like ten years and, and it's such a nice crowd
to be the same seeing the film for the first time publicly.
Yeah.
So I think then
we have to sit with you and let the idea come from it.
I was researching in a different script about a different military
figure, and I found a footnote about the
verification of those remains and how they
they buried it in the ground to hide it from people.
And Stalin didn't want anybody to know that was dead,
which I thought was strange.
And I'd never heard that before.
He didn't want the truth.
Getting out there was dead because he was worried the Allies would
withdraw some of their support.
So he ordered his
police, intelligence, police to keep it buried and hide it
and not make a big deal about it and try and verify that it was him.
And and then the rumors that tried to get the the remains back to Russia.
And this is all murky in history because it's all through the guise
of the Soviet government.
And so it was difficult to sort of verify anything.
And there are different testimonies and different stories from different people.
But what I wanted to do with that, Colonel,
is to start a story that says, you know, Hitler's dead.
I don't like the conspiracy theories that he survived and lived out his days
in Argentina.
I thought it would be nice to tell a story that starts off with Hitler's dead.
Who we're starting from that point and and use this story, this thriller
to talk about some of the sort of horrible and horrific aspects of the burying
of truth, of the hiding of truth and what happens
when you obscure history.
You know, these things that can happen.
Absolutely.
I mean, Charlotte, what attracted you to the role?
Well, what didn't
Brana's such an incredible character.
And the fact that she's based loosely based on or inspired by a real person
and real women who took part in that war
was what fascinated me the most.
I think she was just a very well-written, well-rounded, strong character.
And then having the chat with Ben about the script and giving me
the whole back story and recommending a couple of books to read
and seeing that it was all real inspired by true events
was just incredibly exciting, I think.
And that gives you a lot to play with
because you have the part where you can do a lot of research,
so you feel very informed going into the role,
but then you also have the freedom that it's still a fictional story.
So you are creating your own character.
You have to
absolutely.
And what I really love about the Bradley
character is how she stands up by this background of men
who I think even though you've got these kind of horror, supernatural
elements are her biggest threat are own comrades.
Yeah. She's surrounded by roles like she's says.
Absolutely.
How does it come up that moment in the film that you do?
I'm in awe of Charlotte's acting ability.
I didn't I didn't direct a lot of that.
And there is that moment where she says, I'm surrounded by wolves.
She does this little nod of the head, but you get that there's more behind that.
There's a whole, you know,
wealth of horror that she has of gone through already to get to that point.
Yeah, sort of in that video.
And I quite like the fact, Ben, that you've written to the script that
the Soviets were just as much of a plague
on like Poland and other countries as the Germans.
And you've got the, the tavern lady. He says it thing.
Yeah, yeah. He's going to piss you guys out.
I mean, there's lots of stories about that.
How did you bring that element into it?
Well, you have these decisions, especially if you're
veering off to a more fictional script.
You have decisions to make.
Are you going to stay with these Russian characters?
Like I didn't have to involve other
Polish characters, but I really wanted those guys to be in it
because I didn't want to portray the Russians as being wholly good guys.
And and it's really important to me to have some pose characters
to remind the viewers and the audience that they weren't particularly nice
when they came through Poland.
And and also
that character, the, the the woman who worked in the bicycle,
Justina, she she she has that moment where she says, you know, there's
there's there's not much difference between you if you act that way.
So the things that you've done and the things that they've done
and if they're the same, then this is is a different type of uniform.
And that's important to sort of say that because it's not about, you know,
the righteousness of liberating or the righteousness of being the winner
and the victor of a war.
It's about how you act.
And I think that that message hopefully
resonates with what's going on in the world today.
It's not about, you know, the justification of a war
or justification of winning.
It's how you act during it.
That's important.
Absolutely.
And it's a well-written script because like you said,
you didn't want the Russians to be the technical good guys.
But there are some good guys in her team, just like Tor and Barry Ward and
and then you've got like and there's not.
Matt No, not all men are bad. So you've got the Lucas character.
So how did you get these relationships with Tom and Barry?
Yeah,
I do think that they, you know, they're good characters.
But I think Tor says in that conversation he has with Bronagh that
the some of the stuff he's done and the reason why he's cool too.
So he's also incredibly flawed and, and so is the Lucas character.
And I think that's what makes him all the more interesting.
And I think that's what helps them relate to each other.
And they've all seen and done things that they wish they hadn't
and things that they regret that they're going to have to live with.
But it's how they feel about what they've done that connects them
with each other and helps them empathize rather than character like Emma
just kind of powers everything and doesn't
really look back at what he's done and the consequences of his actions.
But I really enjoyed those scenes that I had with them.
It's a kind of nice moment of of calm and
just kind of showing the character's
deeper emotions and what's going on in their minds
because everything else is like so fast and action
and it has to be to keep people on the edge of their seat.
But it's really nice to have those little moments
where those characters get to tell their stories a little bit.
Some beautiful character work from both the writing and the acting.
So while we did it, so involving in that way.
Thank you.
Yeah.
The, the stuff with Tor, they were different, different characters.
Tom Felton's character has a,
a maybe a more actual romantic backstory.
He's he's, you know, ruined by the loss of a love
and towards backstories, romance says in the violence of his part, he's
he's probably not a very nice guy, you know.
And yet you know,
he doesn't he doesn't say how horrific it was that he he got his nickname.
And and yet when it comes to these moments
of making a decision, he sometimes makes the right decision.
And that's that's good.
And then same with with Tom Felton's character.
And Charlotte says those three really like in Charlotte's character,
making the right decision to maybe go off
script from her mission and do the right thing.
Absolutely. And so out.
And there's a bit more in question.
Charlotte.
And what kind of training did you see?
There's a lot of gun work and some things.
How fun with it.
Developing the training and and doing all the action pieces it
well we didn't have that much gun training to do that.
Yeah I've got a video of Yeah. Looking badass.
You know we had, we had a day where we went out into the forest and in Estonia
they showed us how to use the guns and it was really embarrassing at the beginning.
I just couldn't do it
because they're really old guns and you can't, you
know, you have to plot them and you have to be quite strong.
And the gun itself was already
so heavy and actually grown as a character has the heaviest gun snipers.
So usually you wouldn't
be running with it and shoot and it would be kind of placed on someone.
So that was really fun.
I think I just while I was filming, I wasn't really doing much working out.
But before that,
as soon as I knew that I was doing a film, I was just trying to do as much
light weight training as possible to be able to handle that gun.
That was about half my size.
Weren't working out during the filming.
We made you do so many things that were work out and you run
through a forest like umpteen times with a rifle and a high speed light.
Make my arm shape after a while. Yeah.
And I think that, you know, you've been harshest of the
the bit where she had the pistol the hand pistol.
She just like in practice, in training, looked like she was like
totally comfortable with with that like bang bang bang
stay away from Charlotte. She's, she's pretty badass.
It must be something like
but you just how that you're like yeah powerful.
Yeah when it works well because I was like, oh my God, I hope this works.
I hope I do this. Okay.
And then look back was that oh, yeah,
it looks like it looks like a lot of fun to film,
even though it's like shock and horror and thriller.
It does look like a little fun thing that I think the elements that are on
screen were all fun.
The things that you don't see, hopefully, are the swarms of mosquitoes
that followed us in every forest.
Yeah. Yeah.
And and ticks and yeah.
A bear. And, you know,
there's no way.
Yeah, he's fat.
I'm going to watch the film again
and just imagine there's a bear behind you just watching your work.
Yeah.
Speaking of bears and creatures
I saw, I spoke about the design of, well, the werewolf
and the sort of special effects, and they're really, like,
striking in this film.
I just want to talk a little bit more about how they got developed.
Yeah, well, I mean, that was me
playing into the name as well because there was a group,
you know, called the, you know, guerrilla fighters called the werewolf, the,
you know, the Germans, the Nazis sort of made bigger than they were.
They made the numbers bigger
because it was just the remnants who were whoever wasn't conscripted,
who were who, as you know, survived till the end, who was asked to like
do these guerrilla tactics. And there weren't very many of them.
But that that visual that you get from the name was something we played on
with the with the character of Josef, who thinks that they're talking about robots.
So it's really nice visual elements like for a certain amount of time,
maybe you think that they are, I don't know. You know,
you know
hope a horror film festival audience doesn't expect like full on werewolf.
But, you know, we had, you know,
to sort of camouflage them animal pelts and stuff like that.
They they seem quite creepy when they when they're
coming out of the forest at night. Yeah.
Amazing. It is very, very creepy.
And what.
Very well kind of my own little werewolf suit at the end of it.
It's yeah there's, there's a different and different array of that
you can get like a wolf or a bear or or a bull.
Yeah.
Did you keep it
now? I didn't.
Didn't get to keep any obviously.
Oh no,
they weren't scary though I'd say.
I've only seen the film once and when I went to see it in London,
I and I'm in it and I read the script and everything.
I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through
and I had my agent next to me more.
But we'd have moments of like jumping.
And even though you know what's coming, I just didn't.
Didn't expect it to actually be so creepy
and violent and shocking, actually, which really works.
So hopefully other people feel the same.
I don't see that. I mean, for me, it was the boar.
The bull one's the one that creep me out the most.
I mean, there were there's some nice moments when we're filming it.
It's really difficult to shoot guys dressed up in and sort
of visually empowering outfits running through a very dense forest.
And one of the werewolf
guys went straight into a tree, which we try not to laugh at.
You know, it's not funny, but it was.
And so those moments in the film are like really scary.
I sort of think back to the to the fun that we had
that I like going to have to go watch this film again
and all these little things
that you're talking about and just try and try and spot them.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for talking with me today. That truly great film.
I have a question I don't want you to answer.
Okay. But I have to ask.
Yeah, what box.
Yeah, I mean, that's left ambiguous for for for that reason.
I hope that people come up to me and shout Brad Pitt quotes me.
Yeah, yeah.
No, you know, what do you think's in the box?
Oh, I mean, I don't want to take that.
I want to spoil it for anyone else.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't want people to get ahead of themselves.
I like.
Yeah, just in case.
But I had to ask, I was like, I have to ask what's in the box?
It's Gwyneth Paltrow.
It was actually Gwyneth Paltrow on set.
Yeah, yeah.
She was nice enough to do it just as a cameo. We didn't use it
for outlets to happen.
Yeah, yeah,
yeah.
Well, thank you so much for talking with me today.
I really can't wait for people to see it.
It's a very, very great
and intriguing film with a lot of history and a lot of thrilling things.
So I think she adds, No worries.
I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and I hope this exception
is really good as well.
Yeah, right. So I did. Lovely.
Nice talking to you to take care, guys.
Bye bye.