‘Zone of Interest’ Director Jonathan Glazer on Portraying Nazis as People: ‘Human Beings Did This to Other Human Beings’
Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “The Zone of Interest,” writer-director Jonathan Glazer’s searing Nazi drama about the banality of evil, became the talk of Cannes Film Festival after its debut on Friday night. But the director admits he didn’t know the story he wanted to tell before the cameras were rolling. “You never really know why you tackle and subject. It’s an ever-evolving journey,” he said at Saturday’s press conference for the movie. “It wasn’t one particular moment that I knew I was going to make this film. When I started the process, I didn’t know what perspective we were coming from.” In the end result, “The Zone of Interest,” which is loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, tells the story of Rudolf Höss, a Nazi commandant who designed and built Auschwitz. It also looks at his relationship with his wife Hedwig, as they create their dream life directly next door to the concentration camp. In crafting a portrait of the Holocaust, Glazer says he conducted an “enormous amount of research” to capture the divide between the Höss family’s mundane domestic dramas and Auschwitz, which lies on the other side of the garden walls.