Iain Glen had good reason to jump into “The Last Front,” a WWI family drama set in a quiet Belgian village suddenly overrun by death-dealing German forces.

“I wanted to do this because it was just a really lovely script,” Glen, 63, began in a Zoom interview. “And when I see a role — you know, I have a big ego — that offers a good challenge and something different, I’m very attracted to it.

“But it has to be in a world that I believe in, that is plausible. This I thought was a different take into trying to encompass what war does to communities.

“It’s as relevant today as it ever was, sadly,” he allowed. “Yes, it’s a particular period set in the First World War, a simple, tender tale that looked at what war can do to communities. And to this particular community in Belgium.”

Glen’s Leonard Lambert is a prosperous farmer with two teenagers, a son ready to wed a neighboring local and a younger daughter who can’t wait to grow up. Their lives are soon besieged by German troops on their way to battle in France, soldiers who indiscriminately kill any locals who venture into their path.

“I actually come from farming stock a little bit. My father was the eldest son of a farmer, and both my uncles are farmers,” said this son of Scotland. “Since I’d spent a lot of time on a farm, that didn’t feel too much of a stretch.”

“The Last Front” depicts what historians call, referring to the indiscriminate German slaughter, “The Rape of Belgium.”  It’s financed by Belgians to preserve their history.  Does this give extra responsibility then for Glen?

“Yes, you do feel a responsibility, absolutely, to the story. And the bottom line is that responsibility is enhanced even more so by my being a Scottish man.”

The role was, he said, “not something that I went into a huge amount of research for because, I thought, quite central to the story was the idea that these innocents, these people who are just living the lives that they were living, had no idea that war was coming around the corner at them.

“In fact, even when it did come around the corner, they couldn’t quite compute — and they didn’t register until it was slightly too late. So that felt part of the preparation.

“Certainly, I wanted to prepare in terms of being whatever I was being asked to do as a farmer during that period. But I didn’t want to prepare really emotionally to the things that happened to the character. Because it was as unknown to him as it would be to me. That was the journey.”

“The Last Front” opens Friday