The Zone of Interest

About

‘I left it shaken and stricken; it stayed with me, stubbornly, over the months that followed.’ Wendy Ide, Observer

The year is 1943. Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig strive to build a dream life for their family: their idyllic home, complete with a thriving garden, is separated only by a wall from the horrors of Auschwitz, where Rudolf, a commandant, oversees the Final Solution. As Rudolf's stature in the government grows, his family remains blissfully ignorant of the atrocities going on just outside their front door – and the fact that their patriarch is a key player in one of history's darkest chapters.

Told with masterful restraint by director Jonathan Glazer, aided by powerful performances and an utterly haunting soundscape from his Under The Skin collaborator Mica Levi, The Zone of Interest transforms Martin Amis's novel into a chilling and unforgettable treatise on complicity.

 ‘Taking loose inspiration from a 2014 novel by the late Martin Amis, director Jonathan Glazer demonstrates Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” theory at work.’ Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

‘This is a treatment of the Holocaust like no other. It leaves you feeling both utter dismay and your own implication alongside the perpetrators, rather than the victims.’ David Sexton, New Statesman

‘Like another technically brilliant Oscar favourite, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the movie comes to feel less an insight than an illustration.’ Danny Leigh, Financial Times