Our Review
- Sandra Huller, Christian Friedel, Freya Kreutzkam
- February 2nd 2024
- Jonathan Glazer
Christian Friedel plays Auschwitz commandant alongside Sandra Hüller as his wife in this sobering domestic drama.
Jonathan Glazer’s hard-hitting drama The Zone of Interest depicts the Holocaust in a way we’ve never seen on screen before.
The story, inspired by Martin Amis’ novel of the same name, depicts the mundane day-to-day lives of a German family in Poland. But this is no ordinary family or home – the house is run by Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and it adjoins the border fence of the concentration and extermination camp.
The Zone of Interest takes a radical approach to the subject of the Holocaust – we are the fly on the wall of their home and we simply observe the monotonous, banal goings-on in their family life. On the surface, it is quite a dull domestic drama, but that’s what makes it so powerful – they go about their days without giving much thought about the atrocities going on next door.
The emotional impact of this film is in all the sound design and it should...
