Ben Parker’s debut feature, Chamber, is a taut thriller that places three people trapped inside a submarine. It demonstrated amazing talent from Parker and we at THN have been waiting with baited breath for his follow-up. The wait is finally over and Parker’s sophomore project, Burial, is an intimate World War II story that explores the horrors of war.
London, Christmas Day. The home of an old woman (Harriet Walter), who watches the news of the collapse of The Soviet Union, is broken into by a violent neo-Nazi (David Alexander) hunting for evidence from WWII. Once inside however, he gets a little more than he bargained for…
Flashback to May 1945, the last days of World War II, and the tale of the woman’s younger self. In this gripping, thrill-packed feature, we follow a small band of Soviet soldiers led by intelligence officer Brana Vasilyeva (Charlotte Vega). They are tasked with finding Hitler’s corpse and delivering it back to Moscow and Stalin, as proof of his death. En route, the unit is attacked by German ‘Wehrwolf’ partisans, who stalk the fighters with the ultimate mission to pick them off one-by-one.
Brana leads her determined surviving comrades in a last stand to ensure their ‘cargo’ doesn’t fall into the hands of those who would see it buried, to hide the truth forever. What ensues is a thrilling high-stakes mission.
Burial received its World Premiere at FrightFest in August and is now out on Digital. Ahead of the release we spoke with Parker and his leading lady, Charlotte Vega, about the project.
Burial is based on an element of truth, how did you develop it into this story?
BEN:I did a load of research on the elements of fact in the story. It’s kind of weird talking about the elements of fact because the story of verifying Hitler’s remains was through Russian history and through the testimony and reports of Russian soldiers, and especially the person that Charlotte’s character is loosely based on. All this stuff was suppressed by the Soviet government. So it’s kind of murky – what’s true and what’s not. I knew very early on that I was going to have to just make a piece of entertainment. Make a thriller, move slightly away from those stringent facts and sculpt something that talks about the issues that I wanted to talk about that wasn’t beholden to all these facts. Just the burying and digging back up of Hitler’s remains, I thought was an amazing visual. To me it was more like a horrible buried treasure. The fact that the person ordered to verify the remains of Hitler was Jewish, that also adds inherent conflicts to the story. Those were the things that I wanted to explore.
For many people when they think of women and the war effort, an image of women working in the factories etc. flashes up. As Burial reveals though, other countries had a very different approach to how they used women during the war. Were you aware of this prior to starting writing?
BEN: There’s so many great stories, outside of the UK and America. There was a group of women who would lure Nazis into the forest and then kill them. The Russian soldiers had whole platoons of women who were like bad-ass sniper’s. Those stories are amazing. We don’t get as many of them in the west.
Charlotte, what was it about Ben’s script that made you want to be a part of it?
CHARLOTTE: It’s a female lead in a war film that happens to be a bad-ass sniper. I’ve never received a script like that and I’ve never come close to an opportunity playing a role like that before. That’s the first thing that drew me to it. Then when I started doing some research, I had a chat with Ben and he gave me a bit of the back story of how it was developed and I realised that it was all kind of inspired by true stories. I was totally unaware that all these women fought in the war and played such an important role. I really felt like it was a very important story to tell. It’s fun when you actually have all this research that can help you create a character and prepare the role. But then the freedom that it is actually a fictional story, so it’s a little bit of both.
She’s almost Ellen Ripley. She has that calm level headed presence amongst the chaos…
Ben: That’s my formative years of film watching coming out in everything I do. It’s unavoidable. I wish I could say I wasn’t inspired as a child by watching Alien and Aliens, but it’s on the page.
As someone that grew up with that character being a role model, it’s great to see similar characters still being written. For you Charlotte, what was it like being able to embrace your inner warrior?
CHARLOTTE: It’s amazing. It was a little bit scary. Trying to make it believable that Brana ends up leading this group of men. Ben definitely worked hard on that and was very good at pushing me and making sure that I was that authoritative figure surrounded by these guys who are mostly towering over me as well. Making that believable, it was so much fun. I mean it’s fun getting to boss a load of guys around basically.
BEN: And we talked about you not losing your shit at all. Some of the male characters get to go up to 11 losing their shit, but I never wanted Charlotte to do that. She had to sort of, even when she’s pissed off at the decisions that these guys are making, she still keeps her cool and keeps control. Up until the point where it’s your own personal journey to go and finish this thing, then it is impassioned.
When you read the synopsis and see a group of Russian soldiers written you expect Russian accents. That’s not the case here, what was the thinking behind that?
BEN: I had so many discussions about this. I think because it revolved around Russian soldiers, I think the Russian accent can be quite dodgy. Even when someone’s doing a really good Russian accent, it sounds very 80’s movie, bad guy villain. We knew we were going to use UK actors so I thought well, that’s going to be the neutral that’s going to be UK accents. And then outside of that, we had a creative decision about different accents . All the Germans were going to be Estonian actors with an Estonian lilt to the accent. But on the ground, and especially because a Covid, we had to use different actors on the ground and it mixed it up a little bit. When we got to it, all the UK accents were slightly different as well;, there’s London accents and RP accents. There was a draft of the script where we made more of an effort to explain who everybody was, and make an effort to start speaking in Polish, or in German. At the end of the day, we made the decision to say, look, let’s just not do that and hope that the audience goes with it after the first five minutes.
Why are stories from World War II still so interesting to filmmakers and audiences?
CHARLOTTE: It’s all about the personal stories and there are endless amounts of different perspectives and stories of those people who took part in that war who lived through those years. I don’t think we can ever get bored of hearing different sides.
BEN: The First World War was very trench heavy. It was in trenches and there are some great films like Paths of Glory that are set around the First World War, but the Second World War hit at the time when Hollywood was up and running. They started making films about this war, a lot. I think it went into public consciousness, as well as via films. So the appeal of making films about World War II carried on, but like what Charlotte said in terms of stories, it’s not that far generationally back that We maybe have family members who were around. I think that makes it a little more relatable and the fact that it was a World War and it was everywhere, you know, gives so many different stories. For me, using the setting of World War II to tell a story I could have done it a different way I suppose not involving Hitler, but it instantly clicks with the audience. They know the exposition, they know the background of that situation and it’s very easy to access into all those characters and emotions
Why should people take a chance on Burial?
BEN: I think it is a great mix of genres. I think it’s thrilling. For me, hopefully, if it comes across I tried to zig when people think it’s going to zag. It has unexpected turns and hopefully when people finish watching it, it gives them a bit more than entertainment, they’ve got something to think about. If they see any parallel lines to what’s going on in the world of the moment, that’s good as well.
CHARLOTTE: I just hope that people enjoy it because people do enjoy films, but also come away with those seeds sown to have those discussions and maybe be a little bit more interested in different stories of that era and time period, and give it more research and learn about all those incredible women that were part of the war.
Burial is out on Digital Platforms now.
