They Shall Not Grow Old

"You don't look, you see. You don't hear, you listen. You taste the top of your mouth. Your nose is filled with fumes and death. But the veneer of civilization has dropped away."

"What I hope the film does is that it takes away 100 years and makes you think that those who fought were just the same as us. They were no different and yet what they experienced was something extraordinary in all sorts of ways, good and bad. Their human response to what they experienced is strangely familiar because we all go through times of hardship, pain, suffering, pain and pleasure. We hear these guys talking about the same things that we feel and you suddenly realize that 100 years has just evaporated and it makes it more immediate."

"We had so much stuff. Honestly, 600 hours of sound and 100 hours of footage. There is probably five or six films of this sort that could be made from that archive … Give me two and a half hours and sure, the nurses would have been there. You need to do something focused and intensely and do it justice, or you kind of spread yourself too thin. It was a decision I had to make."