The Zone of Interest: Jonathan Glazer’s Haunting Vision of Complicity
Jonathan Glazer’s latest film has secured its place as one of this year’s most prominent Oscar nominees, earning a total of five nominations, including Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Sound—a surprising feat considering how competitive this year’s awards season has been.
The British director, best known for the sci-fi film Under the Skin starring Scarlett Johansson, now delivers a story far removed from the genre tones of his previous work, though he continues to evoke a deep sense of estrangement between the viewer and what unfolds on screen.
The Zone of Interest is set in Nazi Germany, just outside the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the family of one of the camp’s highest-ranking officers lives in pastoral harmony. Their home is surrounded by nature, their table filled daily with fresh food, and their lives seemingly untouched—except for the faint, ever-present cries and screams of the camp’s victims just beyond their garden wall. The family, meanwhile, chooses to ignore it all, clinging to their comfort.
The film chillingly portrays the coldness of willful ignorance, and perhaps the power of denial that allows individuals to coexist with horrors that, in retrospect, seem unimaginable—especially when committed by people who appear, on the surface, to be “normal” or even kind. Glazer is well aware of this contradiction and inserts glimpses of conscience into the story: the family’s grandmother, who quietly leaves, unable to endure being near such a place; and one of the daughters, who tries to leave fruit for the Jewish prisoners.
But Glazer ensures that these small acts are dwarfed by the overwhelming structure of complicity. The film doesn’t offer redemption—it offers a reflection on moral paralysis, and how entire families, entire systems, maintained evil by choosing not to see.
Glazer achieves something that few directors have before him: he has become both critically acclaimed and commercially viable, building a career rooted in avant-garde cinema. With The Zone of Interest, he sets a precedent for the next generation of independent filmmakers.
The Zone of Interest is now playing in theaters and available on MUBI.
