With World War II raging around them, Gene, an injured American pilot, and his fiancée Penny, an OSS agent, find themselves stranded on a remote estate. As the Allies plan the D-Day Invasion, the couple become aware of a Nazi spy hiding amongst them with stolen documents bound for Germany. Unsure of who to trust, and facing danger around every corner, they must uncover the spy’s identity as the outcome of the war hangs in the balance.
From Decal, the film distribution company that gave us Anora (2025 Academy Award Winner for Best Picture) and Anatomy of a Fall (2024 Academy Award Winner for Best Original Screenplay) comes the new spy thriller Fog of War, written by Luke Langsdale and directed by Michael Day.
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We had the chance to catch up with the director, who shared that the film was loosely based on true events. “The writer is from a village in Europe and there was a farm where they had some people working. One night people saw weird flashes in the woods. It looked like Morse Code and they started asking around and police zeroed in on a family. Two or three days later, the military came and took this family away. No one knows what happened to them,” shared Day.
From there, Langsdale wrote the screenplay for Fog of War, which delves into the idea of Axis spies hiding among a small population — now in the Northeastern United States during World War II.
“World War II was a time period that is still close enough to modern day for everyone we know to be affected by it directly. Our grandparents fought in the war — my grandfather forged his paperwork to join the military while he was underage,” Day said of the time period. “The entire country had to rally together.”
More importantly, they had to rally to defeat one of film’s favorite antagonists: the Nazis.
“Nazis are the ultimate evil,” affirmed Day. “They’re the devil on earth. There’s no other way to put it. From a storytelling perspective, this made for an interesting script once we meet our Nazi supporters — it’s so fascinating as a character piece to get into the headspace of someone who has convinced themselves that they are right, when history clearly shows how wrong they were.”
One of the actors in the film is former Navy SEAL David B. Meadows, who was thrilled to get to work in a story he described as a “slow burn, off-kilter period piece set in the Northeastern fog.”
“I love stories that are more than meets the eye,” he shared. “You have to pay attention to the details.”
I asked him if his military experience helps him in his acting career. “It does, but not the way most people expect,” he confirmed. “The military requires emotional control and regulation, which is not the kind of limited space you want to be in as an actor. For the first few years, I was frustrated because I was approaching roles filtered through that military experience. I had to learn to identify hold-ups and to go at acting and emotions with fresh eyes.”
On the other hand, SEAL training gave him the kind of dedication and discipline that most successful actors are known for, the kind that allow someone to be committed to their craft. “SEAL training was constant and thankless, but years of that gets you ready for the one time you get called to do something cool.” Kind of like booking a major motion picture.
That kind of discipline and attitude impacts the rest of a film crew. “David was so great. He was always early and stayed late. He was always helping. If we were moving gear, he’d grab it and move it with us,” boasted Day. That kind of teamwork is something that makes a tight film schedule — Fog of War filmed in about 15 days, an absolute whirlwind for a war film — run smoothly.
Fog of War stars Jake Abel, Brianna Hildebrand, Géza Röhrig, John Cusack, Mira Sorvino, David B. Meadows, Sal Rendino, David Gere, Julia Ebner, Chris Maher, and Greg Nutcher.
It releases on Demand Friday, April 4, 2025. Pre-order Available on Apple, Amazon, and Fandango at Home.