A report from the Alberta set of Passchendaele sounds like a report from a war zone.

‘It is the most brutal shooting conditions I have ever encountered,’ says Paul Gross, who wrote, directed, coproduces and stars in the Great War feature film epic, with a storyline that moves between Calgary and Belgium, with all locations in Alberta.

‘It is phenomenally cold and impossible to move in the mud and everyone is falling down all the time,’ Gross explains while on his break near the end of the 10-week shoot, which, despite the obstacles, wrapped on schedule Oct. 23.

‘We have achieved a level of authenticity that on many days I wished we hadn’t,’ Gross jokes, noting that his second unit director Frances Damberger (also a coproducer) and DOP Greg Middleton played an important role in keeping the production on track during frosty shooting conditions.

Gross plays a wounded army sergeant who falls in love with a nurse, played by Caroline Dhavernas of Wonderfalls and Hollywoodland fame.

‘We want to use the movie to trigger interest in this part of our nation’s history,’ Gross says.

‘Hopefully we can cut through the mothballs of history and reignite some interest in this war,’ he adds. ‘What it means to be Canadian was defined in the crucible of the western front.’

Meanwhile, recreating the muddy, smoke-filled, rain-deluged Belgium battlefield was one of the most challenging aspects of the production. Trenches were dug, surrounded by dead trees and barbed wire, and rain machines ran constantly to create the bog-like ditches.

‘We had to build roads so the rain machines didn’t sink in the mud,’ says Rhombus Media’s Niv Fichman, the film’s producer (see story, opposite). ‘We had to create a massive infrastructure around this project.’

The Canadian Forces provided troupes as extras, and a decimated European village square was built from scratch.

‘We didn’t want this to be a dinky Canadian production where the war is done with smoke and sound effects,’ explains Fichman.

Historic locations in Calgary districts were used to replicate the home front, while shooting also took place at the Curry Army Barracks and the Tsuu T’ina Indian reserve, where the battle scenes were enacted.

Passchendaele will be released nationwide on Nov. 11, 2008 – the 90th anniversary of the war’s end – by Alliance Films, which is already planning a teaser campaign to launch in theaters this Christmas.

The filmmakers are also aiming to tour the Canadian War Museum’s exhibition on Passchendaele, timed with the movie’s release. And a study guide, produced in conjunction with The Dominion Institute (one of the film’s investors), the Canadian War Museum and the Museum of Regiments in Calgary, will be made available to schools across the country prior to Remembrance Day 2008.