A24’s Nazi drama ‘Zone of Interest’ directed by Jonathan Glazer has received a six-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. The film tells the story of the commandant of Auschwitz and his wife who have created their dream home next to the concentration camp. The constant screams of prisoners, gunshots, and smoke from the gas chambers haunt their paradise, but their indifference to such horrors creates a terrifying and sinister juxtaposition. The film is based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis and stars Sandra Hüller as the wife of Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz commandant during the Holocaust. The cast also includes Christian Friedel, Daniel Holzberg, and Sascha Maaz.
Glazer’s film is austere and challenging, and it is his first time premiering a movie at the Cannes Film Festival. The English director often has long hiatuses between his directorial efforts. Nine years separated “Birth” and “Under the Skin,” while it’s been 10 years between “Under the Skin” and “The Zone of Interest.”
The film has received positive reviews from critics. Variety chief film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote, “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. In a sense, it’s a movie that plays off our voyeurism, our curiosity to see the unseeable. Yet it does so with a bracing originality.”
The film is expected to be released later this year by A24.
