Director Alex Garland said it “made sense” to shoot his Iraq-set combat feature Warfare in the UK to allow the production to accurately recreate
Director Alex Garland said it “made sense” to shoot his Iraq-set combat feature Warfare in the UK to allow the production to accurately recreate the Ramadi street, in which all of the action takes place, at Bovingdon Airfield Studios in Hertfordshire.
“We had two choices,” the director told Screen at the UK premiere on April 1. “One of them would have been to go to various Middle Eastern and North African countries to try to find a street that approximated the street where this took place.
“But the whole focus on the film was to be as accurate as possible, and so it made more sense for us to build it and get it as right as we possibly could,” explained Garland, who co-directed the film with Ray Mendoza.
“I’ve made films in this country for more than two decades,” the UK filmmaker added. “I knew a lot of people. I knew how good they were, and we needed people like that around, so there were huge benefits for us to shoot here.”
Warfare follows a US Navy SEALs operation in an Iraqi city as it unfolds in real time. It is based on the memories of Mendoza, who is a former Navy SEAL, and those of his platoon of a surveillance operation during the Iraq War in 2006.
It is produced by Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich’s London-based DNA Films with A24, which is also releasing the film in the UK and Ireland.
Safety was “paramount”
The ensemble cast features several former Screen Stars of Tomorrow including Will Poulter (2013), Joseph Quinn (2018), Cosmo Jarvis (2013) and Kit Connor (2022).
Ahead of filming, the cast embarked on a military-style “bootcamp” which included equipment training and gun safety.
“Safety was paramount,” Connor told Screen. “We were dealing with blank ammunition… a lot of people assume that that’s safe but it’s not. A big part of our bootcamp was training to make sure we were safe and keeping everyone safe.”
Poulter added that the bootcamp helped them “embrace” the hierarchy of military structures while also creating a deep bond. “We really kicked that off by shaving each other’s heads,” he explained. “We were embracing this culture and this idea characterised by the fact that we’re all a team before we are an individual.”
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