The film is inspired by the book by Martin Amis with the same name. It tells the story of the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf H ss, and his wife Hedwig, who want to build a happy life in a house next to the horrors that took place on the other side, in the extermination camp.(Movie distributor Alambique)
Focusing on the everyday lives of the perpetrators rather than the victims, Glazer’s film examines human beings through the lens of the “banality of evil,” revealing deeply perverse and psychopathic mindsets. With chilling indifference, Hedwig remarks that she will leave “only if she is dragged out.”
The sounds from the other side of the wall—gunshots, screams, and other horrors—replace the sights we expect, as does the smoke rising from the cremation ovens. The film echoes Son of Saul (2015), in which director László Nemes similarly forces viewers to hear the killings of Jews in the gas chambers without directly showing either the executioners or the victims.
Primarily shot in black and white, the film includes brief eruptions of color, such as the scene with the girl and another featuring the swastika etched into ice. It concludes with Höss’s malevolent presence contemplating the Auschwitz Museum, where display cases hold shoes, suitcases, and other belongings of the victims, before the image fades into a black void.
The Zone of Interest premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix, and later received nominations for a Golden Globe and six Oscars.