The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest

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.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 105 minutes
  • Genre: Drama, History, War
  • Stars: Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel, Maximilian Beck, Daniel Holzberg, Sascha Maaz, Wolfgang Lampl, Freya Kreutzkam, Stephanie Petrowitz, Marie Rosa Tietjen, Max Beck, Johann Karthaus, Ralph Herforth, Medusa Knopf, Lilli Falk, Nele Ahrensmeier, Ralf Zillmann, Imogen Kogge, Julia Polaczek, Martyna Poznanski, Luis Noah Witte
  • Director: Jonathan Glazer
 Comments
  • The_Blacksheep - 24 June 2024
    One of the most subversive films of the 2020s
    One of the most subversive films of the 2020s has to be Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest. The film takes place in 1943 in Poland, just without Auschwitz, but is never directly about the Holocaust. Instead, the focus is on SS officer Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedely) and his family. Rudolf Höss had a large home just outside Auschwitz where he lived a normal family life with his wife, child and dog. Auschwitz and its horrors can thus only act as a backdrop to Rudolf Höss's family idyll.

    Scenes alternate/contrast widely. In one scene Rudolf Höss approves a new incinerator and in a later one he reads fairy tales to his children (ironically/macabre enough one about Hansel and Gretel). In another scene, Hedwig Höss (Sandra Hüller) is out tending the garden while a column of smoke rises from Auschwitz in the background. The sound also plays a big role in the film. Family scenes are mixed with soldier sounds, muffled screams and gunshots. This acts as a constant reminder that something dark is going on just a stone's throw away.

    In one of the final scenes, we are suddenly thrown into a holocaust museum where some cleaners are diligently vacuuming the various rooms. At the same time, the camera pans over prison clothes from the extermination camp and a mountain of shoes from executed Jews. Perhaps it is meant as a parallel to the blindness/indifference or normalization that occurs when you are constantly exposed to something, as horrible as it is The Zone of Interest is an incredibly powerful film and its message/theme will be rediscovered by generations for a long time Forward. The depiction of the everyday life of Nazism behind the uniform is a unique take and much creepier than any yelling camp guard.
  • seintorozarindo - 2 June 2024
    No events, but scary
    This movie was really different form other movies I have watched in my life. At the beginning, I was waiting something happen in this movie, like conflicts between families and Jewish people or complaints about the smoke or sound from Auschwitz's. But it wasn't at all. I am scared that wife and her mother said that the garden is so nice even they heard the screaming noise from Auschwitz's. This make me kid of crazy and uncomfortable. But it is sure that these people were there at that time.

    I could enjoy and know how to see and feel movie after I watched this film. It was completely new for me and realized that movie is not only visually work, but sound. I heard the sound, screaming, gunshots, and saw the smoke rising beyond the walls all the time. Feel uncomfortable but I was getting used to hear it somehow. Then I realized that the most scary thing is getting used to it. This was the point of this film.