An Oscar-winning film that focuses on the life of German Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig is now streaming on Channel 4.
Released in 2023, the historical drama The Zone of Interest was written and directed by Jonathan Glazer – previously well known for directing the films Sexy Beast, Birth and Under the Skin, as well as directing music videos for acts including Blur, Massive Attack, Radiohead, Richard Ashcroft and Jamiroquai.
Loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, the film follows the infamous Nazi commander and his family – who live in a home in the ‘Zone of Interest’ next to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The synopsis states: ‘In 1943, the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife, Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house right next to the concentration and extermination camp he helped create.’
The White Lotus’ Christian Friedel stars as Höss, while Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall) plays his wife, with much of the film focusing on their idyllic domestic lives as horrors unfold just over the boundaries of their home – with the family choosing to ignore the sounds of horror, smoke and gunshots.
The film was a critical and commercial success, receiving five nominations including best picture. It won the awards for best international feature film and best sound, with the other two nominations being for best director and adapted screenplay. It also won three Baftas.
This week it was also released on Channel 4, where UK viewers can watch the ‘chilling’ film for free.
In its review of the release, Deadline Hollywood Daily said it ‘takes its place among the great films made on the Holocaust and will probably haunt you long after seeing it’.
‘It’s a remarkable film – chilling and profound, meditative and immersive, a movie that holds human darkness up to the light and examines it as if under a microscope,’ Variety wrote.
‘A devastating Holocaust drama like no other, which demonstrates with startling effectiveness [director Jonathan Glazer]’s unerring control of tonal and visual storytelling,’ The Hollywood Reporter shared.
‘The Zone of Interest is possibly the least overtly traumatic film about the Holocaust ever made, yet it’s devastating in the quietest way,’ Time added.
The Guardian also recently wrote that the drama would ‘inspire awestruck discussion for decades to come’. ‘Jonathan Glazer’s film is an immersive historical drama, but it also makes chilling comment on our present moment, and humanity’s capacity to carry on as genocide takes place,’ it commented.
Meanwhile viewers called it ‘chilling’, ‘captivating’ and a ‘must-see’.
Director Steven Spielberg also declared the film the best Holocaust movie since his acclaimed 1993 film Schindler’s List.
‘The Zone of Interest” is the best Holocaust movie I’ve witnessed since my own. It’s doing a lot of good work in raising awareness, especially about the banality of evil,’ he previously told The Hollywood Reporter.
Gravity and Roma director Alfonso Cuarón also called it ‘probably the most important film in this century’.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2023 Glazer discussed visiting Auschwitz for the first time ahead of filming and seeing the Hösses’ house.
‘I saw the remnants of the garden, and its proximity to the camp, and the wall, and it was chilling,’ he said.
‘Afterwards I entered the camp and looked at the wall from the other side, trying to imagine what the prisoners must have heard.
‘There is no doubt that they would have heard happiness and gaiety as the Höss children laughed and splashed around in the pool. The film became about the proximity of the horror and the happiness, how one person’s paradise is another’s hell.’
Speaking about the film’s haunting soundscape, he also said he made what was ‘in effect, two films’.
‘The one you see, and the one you hear, and the second is just as important as the first, arguably more so. We already know the imagery of the camps from actual archive footage. There is no need to attempt to recreate it, but I felt that if we could hear it, we could somehow see it in our heads,’ he said.
He added: ‘Even though you don’t ever see the horror, it is by far the most violent film I have ever worked on.’
The director also said he made the film to ‘try to restate our close proximity to this terrible event that we think of as in the past’. ‘For me, it is not ever in the past, and right now, I think something in me is aware – and fearful – that these things are on the rise again with the growth of rightwing populism everywhere. The road that so many people took is a few steps away. It is always just a few steps away.’
The Zone of Interest is streaming on Channel 4.
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