Every year in the run-up to the Academy Awards, acclaimed films seem to arrive by the day to compete for our attention. Already playing are The Holdovers and Poor Things, both Oscar-nominated, alongside All of Us Strangers, a gem that somehow didn't make the grade.
Now, February opens with two more Oscar nominees to add to the list: American Fiction and The Zone of Interest.
If you had to pick one of that handful to see first, it's The Zone of Interest - bluntly, it's too important to miss in cinemas. If you can't find the time in the coming weeks, make sure you do before the end of 2024.
Unforgettably written and directed by Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin, Sexy Beast), and loosely based on the Martin Amis book of the same name, this is the story of Nazis Rudolf and Hedwig Höss - the Auschwitz commandant and his wife.
As portents of what was to come on screen, Glazer released the two most terrifying trailers of 2023 for The Zone of Interest. The finished film - winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes in May and guaranteed the Best International Feature Oscar next month - is staggering in its power, but, crucially, has a 12A cert. There should be screenings in schools throughout the decades to come.
Rather than focus on the horrors inside the camp, Glazer has turned the lens to the Höss' family life in their "paradise" on the other side of the wall. The audience is wrongfooted from the off, and that sense of disorientation grows by the minute.
Filming at Auschwitz, Glazer depicts the reality and banality of evil by using audio of trains arriving, dogs barking and screams alongside visuals of gardening, dinner conversations and bedtime stories, the terror heightened by occasional shots of smoke billowing and the night sky ablaze in the background.
At times The Zone of Interest feels like a documentary while in other scenes Glazer uses the thriller dynamics of night vision to show a young Polish girl hiding food for the prisoners at their work sites outside the camp. Those moments of incredible bravery are what the viewer clings to and serve as a rallying call to guard our humanity with our lives.
The ending arrives somewhat abruptly and it's the right decision - as if Glazer is saying, 'Now, over to us'. The Zone of Interest is a landmark film, and this review feels like it's not doing justice to the work of Glazer, his cast and crew. You can.
