Music Download .zone

[Jon Levatte]

The Zone of Interest is a 2023 historical drama film written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, co-produced among the United Kingdom, the United States, and Poland. Loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, the film focuses on the life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hss and his wife Hedwig, who live with their family in a home in the "Zone of Interest" next to the concentration camp. Christian Friedel stars as Rudolf Hss alongside Sandra Hller as Hedwig Hss.[3]

Development of the film began in 2014 around the publication of the Amis novel, which is itself based partially on real events. Glazer opted to tell the story of the Hsses rather than the characters they inspired and conducted extensive research into the family, as he sought to make a film that demystifies the perpetrators of the Holocaust as "mythologically evil". The project was formally announced in 2019, with A24 confirmed to distribute the film. Filming took place primarily around the Auschwitz concentration camp in summer 2021. Additional shots were taken in Jelenia Gra in January 2022.[8]

The Zone of Interest premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2023 and was theatrically released in the United States on 15 December 2023. The film received critical acclaim with praise towards Glazer's direction and script, the minimalist use of music, sound design, cinematography, experimental narrative and atmosphere. Among its accolades, The Zone of Interest received five nominations (including Best Picture) at the 96th Academy Awards, winning two: Best International Feature (the first for a non-English British film) and Best Sound.[9] The film also won the Grand Prix at Cannes and three British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film Not in the English Language;[10] received three nominations at the Golden Globe Awards; and was named one of the top five international films of 2023 by the National Board of Review.

In 1943, Rudolf Hss, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, lives with his wife Hedwig and their five children in an idyllic home next to the camp. Hss takes the children out to swim and fish, and Hedwig spends time tending the garden. Locals handle the chores, and the murdered Jews' belongings are given to the family. Beyond the garden wall, gunshots, shouting, and the sounds of trains and furnaces are audible.

Hedwig's mother comes to stay, and is impressed and pleased by the material status her daughter has achieved. Hss receives word that he is being promoted to deputy inspector of concentration camps and must move to Oranienburg, near Berlin. He objects, and withholds the news from Hedwig for several days. Hedwig asks him to convince his superiors to let her and the children remain in their home; the request is approved. Before Hss leaves, a woman comes to his office and prepares herself for sex. Meanwhile, the Polish girl finds sheet music composed by a prisoner, which she plays on the piano at her home. Hedwig's mother departs unannounced after seeing the burning crematorium at night. She leaves a note that upsets Hedwig.

In Berlin, in recognition of his work, Hss is tasked by Oswald Pohl with heading an operation named after him that will transport 700,000 Hungarian Jews to work at the camps or to be killed. This will allow him to move back to Auschwitz and reunite with his family. He vacantly attends a party organised by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Afterwards, he tells Hedwig over the phone that he spent his time at the party thinking about the most efficient way to gas the attendees.

As Hss leaves his Berlin office and descends a stairway, he stops, retches repeatedly and stares into the darkness of the building corridors. In the present day, a group of janitors cleans the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Back in 1944, Hss continues downstairs, descending into darkness.

Development of The Zone of Interest began in 2014.[11] After completing Under the Skin, Glazer came across a newspaper preview of the then-upcoming Martin Amis novel The Zone of Interest and became intrigued. He optioned the novel after reading it. Paul and Hannah Doll, the novel's two main characters, were loosely based on Rudolf Hss, the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, and his wife Hedwig. Glazer opted to use the historical figures instead and conducted two years of extensive research into the Hsses.[12] He made several visits to Auschwitz and was profoundly affected by the sight of the Hss residence, which was separated from the camp by a mere garden wall.[13] He collaborated with the Auschwitz Museum and other organisations, and obtained special permission to access the archives, where he examined testimonies provided by survivors and individuals who had been employed in the Hss household. By piecing together these testimonies, Glazer gradually constructed a detailed portrayal of the individuals connected to the events.[14][15] He also consulted historian Timothy Snyder's 2015 book Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning during his research.[12]

Glazer wished to make a film that demystifies the perpetrators of the Holocaust, which he noted are often portrayed as "almost mythologically evil". He sought to tell the story of the Holocaust not "as something safely in the past", but "a story of the here and now".[11][16] He compared his approach to the writing of philosopher Gillian Rose, who envisioned a film "that could make us feel 'unsafe', by showing how we're emotionally and politically closer to the perpetrator culture than we'd like to think" and a film seen through the "dry eyes of grief" that is unsentimental and "forensic".[17]

Glazer confirmed development of the project in 2019, with A24, Film4, Access Entertainment and House Productions co-financing and producing.[18][19] Friedel first met Glazer and producer James Wilson in London in 2019 for the role of Rudolf Hss. Despite his own unwillingness to play Nazi figures, he was intrigued by Glazer's approach, which aimed to "give this monstrous person a human face".[16]

Friedel recommended Hller for the role of Rudolf's wife Hedwig, having first met her in 2013 while acting together in the historical drama Amour Fou.[16][20] Hller was first sent an excerpt of the script, an argument between Rudolf and Hedwig presented out of context, before learning the project's nature as a film about the Holocaust. Although she had resolved never to play a Nazi, Hller was convinced after reading the full script and meeting with Glazer, believing that he shared and addressed her concerns about how to properly depict Nazism on screen. Hller's own dog, a black Weimeraner, plays Dilla, the Hss family dog in the film.[21]

The original Hss house has been a private residence since the end of the war.[12] Wear and tear in the subsequent eight decades made it a poor location for the shoot, which required the house to appear brand new. Production designer Chris Oddy ultimately chose a derelict building a few hundred yards away, built after the war but in a similar architectural style.[16] He spent several months converting the home into a replica of the Hss residence, and started planting the garden in April 2021 so that it would be in bloom when filming began.[12] As the camp buildings have aged significantly over the years, they were recreated through the use of computer-generated graphics.[24] Principal photography began around Auschwitz in summer 2021 and lasted approximately 55 days.[12][13] Additional filming took place in Jelenia Gra in January 2022.[8]

The film was shot on Sony Venice digital cameras equipped with Leica lenses.[25] Glazer and cinematographer Łukasz Żal embedded up to 10 cameras in and around the house and kept them running simultaneously, with no crew on set. Żal and his team were stationed in the basement, while Glazer and the rest of the crew were in a container on the other side of the wall, away from the actors. Each take would last 10 minutes. The approach, which Glazer dubbed "Big Brother in the Nazi house", allowed the actors to improvise and experiment extensively during filming.[12][13][15][16] Glazer and Żal aimed for a modern look and did not wish to "aesthetize" Auschwitz. As a result, only practical and natural lighting was used.[26] The nighttime sequences involving the Polish girl, where there was no natural light available, were shot using a thermal imaging camera provided by the Polish military. The low-resolution thermal imagery was then upscaled using AI during post-production.[22][16]

Glazer did not want the atrocities occurring inside the camp to be seen, only heard. He described the film's sound as "the other film" and "arguably, the film".[13] To that end, sound designer Johnnie Burn compiled a 600-page document containing relevant events at Auschwitz, testimonies from witnesses, and a large map of the camp so that the distance and echoes of the sounds could be properly determined.[27] He spent a year building a sound library before filming began, which included sounds of manufacturing machinery, crematoria, furnaces, boots, period-accurate gunfire and human sounds of pain. He continued building the library well into the shoot and post-production.[28][29] As many of the new arrivals at Auschwitz at the time were French, Burn sourced their voices from protests and riots in Paris in 2022. The sounds of drunken Auschwitz guards were sourced at the Reeperbahn in Hamburg.[30]

English musician Mica Levi wrote a score, most of which was ultimately cut as Glazer and Burn did not want to have the film sweetened or dramatized by it. The sound collages Levi wrote for the prologue and the epilogue remained, as did soundscapes created for the sequences involving the Polish girl.[31] The compositions combine human voices with a synthesizer, which Levi described as a pairing of "the oldest, most primordial instrument" with "the most modern".[16]

The Zone of Interest was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival,[32] where it had its world premiere on 19 May,[33] and received a six-minute standing ovation.[34] It won the Grand Prix, the Cannes Soundtrack Award, and the FIPRESCI Prize.[35][36][37]

c80f0f1006