The Zone of Interest
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Short description
The Zone of Interest centres on Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz camp, and his wife Hedwig, who have built a comfortable home for themselves and their children on a plot of land directly adjoining the camp wall. Their house has a large garden with a pool and lawns, which Hedwig tends with considerable dedication, and the family goes about ordinary domestic life there while Rudolf carries out his work on the other side of the wall. The arrangement is threatened when Rudolf receives orders that would move him elsewhere, and the film follows how the couple respond to the prospect of leaving the life they have made. It is loosely based on the novel by Martin Amis.
Jonathan Glazer wrote and directed the film, his fourth feature after Sexy Beast, Birth and Under the Skin, and it was released in 2023. Christian Friedel plays Rudolf and Sandra Hüller plays Hedwig, with a credited cast of 66 and crew of 173. Made for around 15 million USD, it took roughly 53 million USD worldwide.
On IMDb it holds 7.3/10 from 165,000 votes, and on TMDB 7/10 from 2,758 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 8.7/10 from 357 reviews, a notably higher figure than the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The image of the young Polish woman was based on a certain Alexandra, whom director and screenwriter Jonathan Glazer met while gathering material for the film. At the age of 12, she was a member of an underground organization and rode her bicycle to the concentration camp with apples for the prisoners, and her actual bicycle and dress are shown in the film.
- Director and screenwriter Jonathan Glazer did not want the audience to see all the atrocities that took place in the concentration camp. He wanted them to hear it. Therefore, sound operator Johnny Burn compiled a 600-page document describing significant events in the history of Auschwitz, including eyewitness accounts and a detailed map of the camp. This map allowed for precise determination of distances between points and the range at which sounds could be heard. Burn spent a year compiling a sound library, which included sounds of production equipment, the crematorium, furnaces, the trampling of shoes, gunshots, the clatter of railcars, barking dogs, and screams. Since many French people were brought to Auschwitz, Burn used screams from protests in Paris in 2022. Sounds of drunken guards were provided by recordings made at a train station in Hamburg.
- Director Jonathan Glazer ordered the installation of remotely controlled cameras in the house and garden so that the actors would not know if they were being filmed at any given moment, and if so, whether it was a close-up or not. This allowed the actors to fully immerse themselves in what was happening.
- The protagonist, played by Sandra Hüller, tells her friends that her coat is “From Canada.” That was the name given to a massive warehouse within the concentration camp grounds where items confiscated from prisoners were stored.
- Filming began in the summer of 2021 near Auschwitz in Poland. Filmmakers hoped to shoot in the actual home of commandant Rudolf Höss, but the house was in terrible condition due to its location on a UNESCO World Heritage site. A suitable building was found nearby. The filmmakers began planting trees as early as April 2021.
- Jonathan Glazer's screenplay has very little in common with the literary source material – the novel of the same name by Martin Amis. Amis’s novel tells a fictional love story, narrated from three different perspectives and often using a comedic tone.
- Martin Amis, the screenwriter and author of the novel on which the film is based, died on the day of the film's premiere at the 76th Cannes Film Festival.
- Thanks to the numerous cameras used during filming, director and screenwriter Jonathan Glazer had over 800 hours of footage by the beginning of the editing process.
- The Höss family's residence was not authentic, however, the scene in the basement was filmed in a real basement of a house where the Höss family once lived.
- Once Sandra Hüller decided not to play roles of Nazis, convinced that actors, consciously or not, try to give their characters a certain glamour. Therefore, Jonathan Glazer gave her an unglamorous role.
- The sound of a motorcycle engine is audible in outdoor scenes. Among Rudolf Höss's staff, there was a designated person who started the motorcycle to drown out screams and gunfire.
- Almost the entire film was shot in natural light, and a thermal imaging camera was used for the night scenes.
- The film depicts a Hoffmann kiln, invented and patented in 1858 by German engineer Friedrich Hoffmann.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
