The Zone of Interest (12A)

★★★★★ A towering, awful masterwork, Jonathan Glazer's stark film about the domestic routine of the Höss family next door to Auschwitz is a colossal, profoundly disturbing achievement in filmmaking. ~ Little White Lies.

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Oscar Nomination for Best Picture, Best Director, International Feature Film.

The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp. 

Languages:
German, Polish and Yiddish

Subtitles:
Full English

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★★★★★ This is the most uniquely disquieting piece of Holocaust cinema in memory. ~ Sunday Irish Independent.

★★★★★ Jonathan Glazer’s unforgettable Auschwitz drama is a brutal masterpiece. ~ The Observer.

★★★★★ Perhaps the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen on this subject. ~ Irish Independent.

★★★★★ An uncompromising and chilling vision of evil unlike any other film about Nazism, you will never forget this Holocaust nightmare. ~ The i.

★★★★★ The Under the Skin and Sexy Beast director has made a blood-freezing treatise on the banality of evil – and it's proved a hit at Cannes, where it received a six-minute standing ovation. ~ BBC.

★★★★★ The English director's film, based loosely on Martin Amis’s novel, is beautiful and terrible. ~ London Evening Standard.

★★★★★ This adaptation masterfully reinvents Martin Amis novel and is easily Jonathan Glazer’s most mature work. ~ The Times.

★★★★★ If this is cinematic poetry then it is poetry of the starkest measure. Yet so original is the approach that it positively yells of authorship. ~ Irish Times.

★★★★★ Glazer's artful approach and cold sense of remove, plus an unforgettable score from experimental composer Mica Levi, make this a deeply disturbing depiction of the banality of evil, and a Holocaust drama like no other. ~ Radio Times.

★★★★★ A hellish, daring spin on more traditional Holocaust movies, Glazer’s film – which has been nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture – is set on the literal fringes of Auschwitz, with seemingly idyllic images of family life bordering the horror on the other side of the fence. ~ The Independent.

★★★★★ A striking, unforgettable exercise in absence, this is about what we don’t see — and what we choose not to see. The horror is unseen but underlying, and all the more arresting because of it. ~ Empire.

★★★★★ Glazer’s haunting Holocaust movie explores everyday evil and proves the peripheral atrocities are impossible to ignore. A singular piece of work. ~ Total Film.

★★★★★ It’s careful in deciding what it does and doesn’t show, and it seeks a way of addressing this story that honours the facts while not treading over old ground formally or dramatically. It’s provocative in a deeply intelligent way. ~ Time Out.

★★★★★ Glazer’s Auschwitz film is horrifying in its banality. Devastating and vital, the Under the Skin director's Oscar-nominated drama shows how evil can flourish in the most mundane circumstances. ~ Telegraph.

★★★★★ Glazer has achieved something much greater than just making the monstrous mundane — by rendering such extreme inhumanity ordinary he reawakens us to its true horror. ~ Financial Times.

★★★★★ 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. ~ RTE.