Genre: Film
Grade: A
Notable People: Christian Friedl, Sandra Huller, Directed by: Jonathan Glazier
Title: The Zone of Interest
Review: This extraordinarily provocative film won the 2024 Oscar for Best International film and is available now on HBO Max-with sub-titles. Written and directed by Jonathan Glazier and co-produced between the United Kingdom, the United States and Poland-it is Loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, and focuses on the life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss and his wife Hedwig, who live with their family in a home in the “Zone of Interest”. They are a very typical German family with kids playing in the beautiful summertime gardens and a wonderfully rehabbed country fresh property with swimming pool, trips to the lake and family picnics- and they just happen to live next door to the massive death camp where daddy goes to work each dat preside over the genocide. All very mundane, except that their property is bordered by Auschwitz and their very ordinary daily life is set against a sky with blackened smoke from the death ovens and the constant sounds of death and despair-all of which they ignore. The seemingly gentle film hovers over a brutal portrayal of the complete unimportance of those being cremated, in the horrific ovens, to the average German soldier. Many powerful moments in the film are easily overlooked given the soft blurry capturing of mundane family life. We never actually see the Camp, but are never unaware of it. A powerhouse!