Director of Auschwitz Drama Says Showing Domestic Bliss During Holocaust Speaks to ‘Capacity Within Each of Us for Violence’
thewrap.com“The Zone of Interest,” which premiered on Friday, the British director Jonathan Glazer said he’s been thinking about making a film about the Holocaust for many years, but only figured out the story he wanted to tell after he visited Auschwitz a few years ago. “When we started the film I wasn’t sure what film we were going to make, what perspective it would be from,” he said.
But then he visited the camp where 1 million European Jews were gassed and incinerated, and 150,000 others murdered as well. “It began to evolve from my own journey, that visit,” Glazer said. “The house and garden the commandant lived in … Its proximity to the camp was jaw-dropping.
It got into me.”That led to the extraordinary “The Zone of Interest,” which strictly limits its gaze to the happy family life – four children, dogs, picnics, gardening, tea parties and bedtime stories – that Rudolf Hoss and his family enjoyed.
Only a brick wall separates them from the mass murder taking place a stone’s throw away, which Hoss oversees. Their garden is fertilized with human ash.
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