Jonathan Glazer’s first feature film since 2013’s “Under the Skin” is the long-awaited and much anticipated “The Zone of Interest.” The drama premiered to rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it won the second-biggest award, the Grand Jury Prix prize. “Zone of Interest” features Sandra Hüller and Christian Friedel in the lead roles, and the drama follows a young family setting out to build their dream house. The thing is that the dream house is on the other side of the fence from the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, of which the husband, Rudolf Höss, is commandant. Ralph Herforth co-stars.
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Discussing the film in Cannes, Glazer explained that he was struck by the proximity of the home to the camp. “I think that just really got into me,” he said. “I thought that I would make something about the wall, actually, that divided the camp from the garden, from the idyll they made for themselves, quite literally built on the bones of victims. That wall became a sort of manifestation of something that we tell ourselves, how we compartmentalize for our own convenience.”
In our review, writer Gregory Ellwood describes the movie as feeling “though you were looking through a window.” This immersiveness allows the audience to “consider that this authoritarian scenario isn’t far off from increasingly fascist acts in our own society today.”
Here’s the official synopsis:
The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.
Inspired by the novel of the same name by Martin Amis (who strangely passed away the day the film premiered in Cannes), “ Zone of Interest” also finds Glazer reuniting with his acclaimed “Under the Skin” composer Mica Levi for the score. Distributed by A24 Studios, “Zone Of Interest” will receive a limited release on December 8. Watch the first trailer below.
