Presenting voices of the veterans combined with colourised archive footage which brings to life the reality of war on the front line, the film premiered to critical acclaim at the London Film Festival on 16th October and received acclaim from audiences when it aired on BBC One earlier this month.
It was co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW – the UK’s arts programme for the First World War Centenary – and Imperial War Museums in association with the BBC, and features original footage from IWM’s film and audio archive and audio from BBC archives.
The project was supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
A special 30-minute Q&A with Peter Jackson also features on both the Blu-ray and DVD releases.
Jackson comments: “I wanted to reach through the fog of time and pull these men into the modern world, so they can regain their humanity once more – rather than be seen only as Charlie Chaplin-type figures in the vintage archive film.
“By using our computing power to erase the technical limitations of 100-year-old cinema, we can see and hear the Great War as they experienced it.”
