The Deer Hunter is a 1978 war rama film about a trio of Rusyn American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. It is loosely inspired by the German novel Three Comrades (1937), by World War I veteran Erich Maria Remarque, the author of All Quiet on the Western Front, which follows the lives of a trio of World War I veterans in 1920s Weimar Germany. Like the novel, The Deer Hunter meditates and explores the moral and mental consequences of war violence and politically-manipulated patriotism upon the meaning of friendship, honour, and family in a tightly-knit community and deals with controversial issues such as drug abuse, suicide, infidelity and mental illness. The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.