Director Edward Berger on beating Cailín Ciúin and his new film

Director Edward Berger would like to apologise to the Irish people for winning the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in 2023, an award the Austrian told Oliver Callan he felt guilty about. Ireland’s entry that year was An Cailín Ciúin, which definitely deserved an Oscar, but you’d have to say that Berger’s World War I drama All Quiet on the Western Front – obviously a very different film – also very much deserved its win.

Berger was talking to Oliver Callan about his new film, Conclave, based on Robert Harris’s bestselling 2016 novel. It tells the story of the death of the Pope and the hugely political process that happens in the aftermath of his death to choose a successor. The film has a terrific cast: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow. Berger told Oliver that he was drawn to the politics and the setting:

"You know, there’s a seat of power and then it’s suddenly vacant and then a whole bunch of people are going to get out their knives and try to stab each other in the back, vying for the throne. So that’s always an interesting dynamic no matter where it happens, in Washington DC, in Dublin or in the Vatican."

We’ve never really seen what really goes on during the actual Conclave, the secret election that chooses the next Pope. The film's story centres on Ralph Fiennes’s Lawrence, a cardinal with doubts – something that appealed to Berger:

"Ralph Fiennes has this wonderful inner journey of doubt. He’s a doubting cardinal. He doesn’t quite know if he should be there. He has difficulty – just imagine – he has difficulty with prayer, he says."

The difference between Edward Berger’s last film – All Quiet on the Western Front – and Conclave is brought up by Oliver. One film is all about the epic, sweeping horror of war and the other takes place in a few rooms in Rome. That difference was one of the things that drew Berger to the story:

"The main thing is that it’s a challenge, you know? It feels the other way around from All Quiet. It feels the opposite thing, something that you haven’t done before, that you, you know, that you don’t quite know how to do. And this being locked in, based on dialogue rather than action, was a great challenge to me. And so I wanted to try that. A war inside, basically."

Although the film wasn’t shot in the Vatican, Edward and his crew did spend a lot of time there and the director was eager to show the contrast between the extravagant setting, the antiquated dress and the mundanity of people just getting on with their days:

"When you wake up in Rome and you’re making this movie, you look out the window with your espresso and you look downstairs and there’s a nun having a coffee in the corner and two priests smoking in that doorway and an archbishop rushing with his briefcase across the yard there and you realise it’s just, it’s just people going to work, you know. They’re like you and I."

Berger was keen to put in what he calls the modernity that he saw in Rome and that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with a film about the Vatican and the choosing of a new Pope. So, there are iPhones and vapes and smoking:

"And weaknesses that we all have and that they have. So that is a very big element of the film. Even the Pope ends up in a plastic body bag, I guess, in the back of an ambulance like all of us."

(That’s not the spoiler alert that it sounds like, by the way, the death of the Pope is one of the film’s opening scenes.)

Conclave is already being spoken about as being an Oscar contender when the awards are given out next March. Which brings us back to that apology. All Quiet on the Western Front won four Oscars in 2023. It might have been nice to let Ireland have just one of them for An Cailín Ciúin, no?

"I’m so sorry. And the wonderful director, Colm Bairéad, who made a great film. I felt very guilty holding the Oscar."

Of course he did. You can hear Oliver’s full chat with director Edward Berger by clicking or tapping above.

Conclave is released in Irish cinemas on Friday 29 November.