The Zone of Interest

 2024 Oscar Awards

Best International Film Feature (UK) Winner
Best Sound Winner

This movie is loosely based on the late British author Martin Amis's book that focuses on Rudolf Hoss, the extremely driven commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Austria. "The Zone of Interest" refers to the area surrounding the death camp. 

English Director Jonathan Glazer filmed near the actual camp in Auschwitz  which is now a memorial museum. He also built a replica of the Hoss's residence. Dialogue is in German, with certain compelling and powerful scenes shot in night vision juxtaposed within the movie that was presented in vivid shots against a drab, gloomy background. Glazer did an excellent job by seamlessly blending scenes of a happy family with sounds of destruction and mayhem from the camp. No wonder, it won the Oscar award for Best in Sound. 

The film centers on the family life of the Nazi commander in a modest house with lush gardens and swimming pool just a few meters away from the site where millions of Jews were killed in gas chambers. We see him, his wife Hedwig and their 5 children living in pure oblivion of the horrors behind the perimeter fence. A normal, almost clinical existence with full household help at their beck and call yet we don't get any sense of extravagance. They were quite ordinary during an extraordinary period in history.

We are not shown any gruesome scenes of the atrocities committed against the Jewish people but long angle shots will reveal the smoke billowing from the chimneys in the camp. At some point, it seemed like it was snowing but actually it was from the ashes of the prisoners. Eerie sounds of gunfires, of people screaming, dogs barking echoes in the background during a family dinner. We have the ladies of the household trying on clothes which were evidently taken from the female prisoners. Mrs Hoss (Sandra Huller) even boasted that she found a diamond hidden in a toothpaste so she instructed the help to buy all the toothpaste they could find. 

Beyond all that, we can be forgiven to think of them as any ordinary German family living in a small town with their own dreams and aspirations, just like the rest of us. But we must never ever forget what the Nazis did to the Jewish people. Because to deny, or even forget it ever happened would be a greater crime to human kind. 

Kudos for winning two Oscar awards, Best Sound and Best International Film Feature (UK).