On Christmas Eve in 1944, 65 U.S. Marines from the 4th and 29th Marine Regiments of the 6th Marine Division played a football game on the island of Guadalcanal. Of the players, many would go on to play in the NFL, but 15 of them would be killed in the upcoming battle of Okinawa. That extraordinary true story is retold in Director Peter Berg’s biographical sports drama, The Mosquito Bowl.

Based on Buzz Bissinger’s narrative novel, The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II, Berg’s film tells the story of four star college football players who joined the Marines after the attack on Pearl Harbor, then participated in that legendary game which for many, would be their final match.

On October 18, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Berg discussed the making of The Mosquito Bowl during a Q&A moderated by Director David O. Russell (Madden). He is also scheduled to speak about the film following the New York screening on October 31.

During the Los Angeles conversation, Berg spoke about his visual approach to the film.

“I really wanted to try and make it as immersive an experience as I possibly could. I wanted those tight shots to try and have an audience not spectate the film but feel like they were almost participating in it. That’s why there is so much closeness. I kept writing it tight and a voice inside my head was like ‘You can't stay that tight for an entire film. You’ve got to get wide.’ And I’m like ‘How wide? Wide shot of a battlefield, a wide shot of the ocean?’ I’m like ‘No, I think wider. The earth.’ I was thinking about the overview effect. It’s a phenomenon that astronauts describe when they finally get into space and they’re looking back at our planet. Astronauts talk about having the spiritual experience of wanting to cherish our planet and think about our planet as this rare, unique, minuscule trillionth of a grain of sand. If you took all this in, the ocean and having this emotional feeling. And to think, that's true, and how human beings decide to spend our time on this tiny little planet, and how territorial we get and how violent we get and how murderous we get.”

Berg’s other directorial credits include the feature films Spenser Confidential, Mile 22, Patriots Day, Deepwater Horizon, Lone Survivor, Very Bad Things, The Rundown, Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom, Hancock, Kings Ransom and Battleship; the movies for television Virtuality and Bloodline; the pilot episodes for the television series Wonderland, Friday Night Lights, Prime Suspect and The Leftovers; episodes of the mini-series American Primeval, Painkiller, Player 54: Chasing the XFL Dream, and Boys in Blue; and episodes of the television series Chicago Hope, 30 for 30 and Entourage. Berg has been a DGA member since 1997.