The Zone of Interest

Presented by Reel Alternatives Huntsville in partnership with Algonquin Theatre

Nominated for five awards at the 2024 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, Jonathan Glazer won the Oscar for Best International Film and the Grand Prix at Cannes ’23 for this chilling film about Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife, who quite literally live amongst the ashes of their actions.

Adapted from the novel of the same title by Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest centres on the domestic life of Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall) and Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), whose family home nestled between train tracks and gas chambers is spitting distance from Auschwitz, the infamous German concentration camp located in occupied Poland, where Rudolf serves as commandant.

Towards the final days of the Holocaust, Hedwig is fixated on self-preservation and creating a slice of paradise for her family, while Rudolf is increasingly burdened by his duties. We reside inside the family’s encampment, with background voices of ghost-like prisoners muffled by the perpetrator’s quotidian musings. Shot on location, The Zone of Interest weds banal and overt acts of evil with unforgettable reminders of resistance (it was shot in monochrome by thermal-imaging cameras). Dispassionately examining the ordinary existence of people complicit in horrific crimes, The Zone of Interest forces us to take a cold look at the mundanity behind an unforgivable brutality.

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