---
title: "The Zone of Interest"
year: 2023
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-zone-of-interest"
fi1m_id: "the-zone-of-interest"
imdb_id: "tt7160372"
tmdb_id: 467244
wikidata_id: "Q115993222"
fi1m_score: 91
critics_score: 89
critics_reviews: 23
published: "2026-09-10"
updated: "2026-09-18T08:37:41.557469+00:00"
region: "BG"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Zone of Interest (2023)

Directed by Jonathan Glazer · 1h 45m · Drama, History, War

## Identity

The Zone of Interest

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/the-zone-of-interest
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** the-zone-of-interest
- **IMDb ID:** tt7160372
- **TMDB ID:** 467244
- **Wikidata ID:** Q115993222
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7160372/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/467244, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q115993222

**Fi1m score: 91** · Critics 89 from 23 reviews

*In a sentence:* The lilacs are out, the children are in the pool, and the screaming is somebody else’s problem

> Jonathan Glazer’s film about the Auschwitz commandant and his family stays in their house and garden and never enters the camp. What it does with sound instead is the most frightening thing we have seen in years, and we would tell a stranger to see it.

## Synopsis

Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) runs Auschwitz and lives with his family in a villa whose garden backs onto the camp wall. His wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) tends the flowers, manages the Polish servants and has her friends round for coffee, while their five children swim in the pool and play in the grounds. Höss leaves for work each morning through the gate, meets engineers about the camp’s equipment and comes home for dinner. Nothing beyond the wall is shown. Jonathan Glazer writes and directs, taking his title from Martin Amis’s novel, with Mica Levi providing the music and Łukasz Żal photographing the house and garden in fixed, distant shots.

## Review

Jonathan Glazer’s film is set in a comfortable house with a large garden. The man who owns it is Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and the far wall of the garden is the wall of the camp. Glazer, who wrote the script as well as directing it, has taken Martin Amis’s novel and kept the title and little else. What remains is a summer of family routine, filmed as if the family were unremarkable, and it frightened us more than any film about the Holocaust we can remember. We would tell a stranger to see it. It runs 105 minutes, carries a 12A certificate, and shows no violence at all.

Christian Friedel plays Höss as a man who likes things done properly. He reads to the children, checks the doors at night, and listens to two engineers pitch a more efficient crematorium with the polite nods of a man buying a boiler. Sandra Hüller’s Hedwig is worse, because she is happier. She has the garden, the greenhouse, the Polish servants and a fur coat that has arrived from somewhere, and Hüller gives her the settled contentment of a woman who has got what she wanted. The five children swim, squabble and are sent to bed, and Glazer films them as children, which is harder to watch than if he had made them sinister.

Łukasz Żal keeps the camera still and a long way back. Scenes are shot wide, in flat daylight, from about the height of someone standing in the doorway, and nobody is given a close-up. It looks like security footage of a happy home. Chris Oddy’s production design gives the villa cream walls and tiled floors, and a garden thick with flowers, with a whitewashed wall, a run of wire and a chimney beyond it, in shot for most of the film and mentioned by nobody. Małgorzata Karpiuk dresses the family in white cotton and floral prints, so they look like an advertisement for the countryside. Paul Watts cuts each scene short, usually before anyone in it has had time to react.

Then there is the sound, and that is what got us. About ten minutes in we realised the low rumble under the birdsong had been there since the first scene, and that the shout we had just half heard was not one of the children in the pool. After that we could not stop listening: a single shot, a dog, a train arriving at night, an orange light moving across a bedroom ceiling. Nobody in the house turns their head. Mica Levi’s music is used sparingly, a long churning drone over a black screen before the first image and a few short passages after, and the music credit is shared with Joseph Wulf. Everything else you hear is the camp.

We have two reservations. At night the film switches to thermal imaging to follow a Polish girl who cycles out to the work sites and leaves apples in the earth for the prisoners. She is white against a black world, and hers are the only scenes in which anyone is kind. They are the one place where Glazer tells us how to feel; the rest of the film has trusted us to manage. A few critics have asked whether a film this carefully composed is making something handsome out of the worst thing that happened, and there were moments, watching the light in Hedwig’s garden, when we asked it too. We think the coldness is the point. We understand anyone who thinks it is an excuse.

Glazer’s previous film, *Under the Skin* (2013), also had music by Levi, and also watched something inhuman move through ordinary streets while nobody looked twice. Here the inhuman thing has a wife, five children and a well-run kitchen, and the streets are its own. It is a smaller, stricter film than that one, and a better one.

Watch it with the sound up and nothing else running. At home, wait until the house is quiet, because a dishwasher in the next room would be enough to spoil it. The family on screen managed to ignore a good deal more.

*Fi1m score 91, published 10 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews are close to unanimous, and they agree on why. Nearly every critic describes the same film: the Höss family’s sunlit domestic routine beside Auschwitz, the camp never shown, its horror carried by sound. The sound design is the department praised most often and most specifically, with Mica Levi’s score named alongside it as part of what makes this unlike other Holocaust dramas. Glazer’s detachment, the static, surveillance-like camera and the refusal to show violence are read as the point rather than a limitation. Sandra Hüller and Christian Friedel are singled out repeatedly for playing functionaries rather than monsters.

The reservations are few but pointed. Sight and Sound wonders whether replicating the perpetrators’ perspective so coldly, and choosing this story at all, is the right call. The Guardian is the lone mixed voice, calling it technically brilliant while asking whether it revives arguments about making slick cinema out of historical horror. The spread is otherwise narrow.

## Straight answers

**Is The Zone of Interest worth watching?**

*The Zone of Interest* is worth watching for anyone who can bear a film about Auschwitz that never shows the camp, and we scored it 91. Jonathan Glazer keeps the camera in the commandant's house and garden and lets the sound do the rest, which frightened us more than any Holocaust film we can remember. Watch it with the house quiet and nothing else running.

**How long is The Zone of Interest, and what is it rated?**

*The Zone of Interest* runs 1h 45m. It is a drama and history film.

**Where can I watch The Zone of Interest in Bulgaria?**

*The Zone of Interest* is not on any streaming or rental service in Bulgaria at the moment. It is available in 28 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

**How violent or frightening is The Zone of Interest, and is it suitable for children?**

*The Zone of Interest* carries a 12A certificate and shows no violence at all; what it does with sound is the frightening part. The camp is heard, never seen: a shot, a dog, a train at night, a rumble under the birdsong that nobody in the house turns to notice. Older teenagers will manage; younger children will find it slow, and its dread needs an adult to explain.

**How does The Zone of Interest compare to Son of Saul?**

*The Zone of Interest* and [*Son of Saul*](https://film.one/film/son-of-saul) look at the same camp from opposite sides of the wall. Glazer stays in the commandant's garden in fixed, distant shots with no violence on screen, while Nemes stays in close-up on one prisoner and is exhausting to sit through. Glazer's is the stricter and, we think, the better film; Nemes's is for those who want to be inside it.

**Is The Zone of Interest based on a true story or a book?**

*The Zone of Interest* is based on Martin Amis's novel of the same name, but Glazer has kept the title and little else. It is about Rudolf Höss, the real commandant of Auschwitz, and his family in the villa beside the camp wall. Knowing the book is no help; the film works entirely on its own.

**What should I watch after The Zone of Interest?**

After *The Zone of Interest*, try [*Son of Saul*](https://film.one/film/son-of-saul) (2015, Fi1m 87): The same camp from the other side of the wall, shot in close-up. Then [*Come and See*](https://film.one/film/come-and-see) (1985, Fi1m 92): The occupation of Belarus through a boy’s eyes; the film Glazer’s is answering; and [*The Act of Killing*](https://film.one/film/the-act-of-killing) (2012, Fi1m 88): Mass murderers re-enact their crimes cheerfully; the banality without the distance.

### Reviews we read (26)

- **Little White Lies**, Hannah Strong (5/5/5): Glazer’s stark film about the Höss family’s domestic routine next door to Auschwitz is a colossal, profoundly disturbing achievement. It highlights the banality of evil through mundane family life juxtaposed with the unseen horrors just over the wall. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/the-zone-of-interest)
- **Radio Times**, Max Copeman (5/5): The review describes the film as a striking and deeply disturbing depiction of the banality of evil, focusing on the Höss family's life next to Auschwitz without showing the atrocities directly. It singles out Glazer's artful cold remove and Mica Levi's score as making it a unique Holocaust drama. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-6ws4lo/the-zone-of-interest/)
- **Time Out**, Dave Calhoun (5/5): Glazer delivers a bold, experimental and provocative take on the Holocaust that honours the facts without treading familiar ground. The film’s power lies in the tension between the family’s crisp, sunlit domestic idyll and the unseen industrial horror next door. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/zone-of-interest-2023)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Justin Chang (95/100, inferred): The critic calls it a masterpiece that explores evil without glamorizing it, transmuting the mundane into something mesmerizing. He singles out the sound design for praise, noting how it conveys the horrors next door without showing them. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-12-14/the-zone-of-interest-review-jonathan-glazer-drama-auschwitz-holocaust-wwii)
- **The AV Club**, Manuel Betancourt (A): Glazer's Auschwitz-set drama is a staggering cinematic achievement and instant classic, a discomfiting and horrifyingly mundane portrait of the Höss household that forces viewers to confront the banality of evil through its observational style. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-zone-of-interest-movie-review-jonathan-glazer-1851098250)
- **Empire**, Alex Godfrey (90/100, inferred): Glazer's unique and striking film is a study of moral vacuity and the attitude towards atrocity, made all the more upsetting by its detachment and sound design. It singles out the everyday dismissal of camp noises by the family and the subtle, haunting imagery (such as the mother's nighttime glimpse of the chimney) as what gets under the skin. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/the-zone-of-interest/)
- **Screen Daily**, Jonathan Romney (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a remarkable, objective portrait of Nazi domesticity executed with chilly control that leaves space for the audience's response, comparing it favorably to Son of Saul as an essential, daring work. It praises the minimalist focus and gradual revelation of the setting. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-zone-of-interest-cannes-review/5182303.article)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney (90/100, inferred): The critic calls Glazer's film a devastating Holocaust drama like no other, praising its formal control and tonal storytelling in depicting the Höss family's bucolic life beside Auschwitz as the essence of the banality of evil. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-zone-of-interest-review-jonathan-glazer-1235496467/)
- **The i Paper**, Christina Newland (90/100, inferred): Glazer's remarkable and chilling film is an uncompromising vision of evil, observing the banal domestic life of the Höss family while letting the horrors be imagined through sound design. It singles out the flawless contrast between lush visuals and abject audible horror, plus Hüller's terrifying performance, as key to its queasy power. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/the-zone-of-interest-review-you-will-never-forget-holocaust-nightmare-2880413)
- **Evening Standard**, Jo-Ann Titmarsh (85/100, inferred): Glazer's visually stunning and intelligent film depicts the banal, systematic horror of Auschwitz from the perpetrators' side of the barbed wire with great craft. It singles out the family's chilling indifference to the camp's sounds and the wife's gleeful domestic bliss as particularly disturbing. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/the-zone-of-interest-movie-review-jonathan-glazer-martin-amis-auschwitz-b1082646.html)
- **Film Comment**, Beatrice Loayza (85/100, inferred): The review highlights the film's quasi-experimental ambient horror style, using sound design and withheld visuals to generate unease from the perpetrators' insulated perspective. It praises the clinical, anthropological distance and moral refusal to aestheticize the Holocaust. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/cannes-2023-in-between-days-jonathan-glazer-the-zone-of-interest-todd-haynes-may-december-review/)
- **Total Film** (85/100, inferred): Glazer's haunting and singular work is a challenging exploration of everyday evil and compartmentalisation through the Höss family's perspective next to Auschwitz. It singles out Sandra Hüller's superb, disarmingly human performance and the film's insistence on confronting peripheral atrocities as particularly memorable. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/the-zone-of-interest-review/)
- **Vulture**, Bilge Ebiri (85/100, inferred): The film is psychologically searing in its focus on what it doesn't show, contrasting mundane domestic routines with the horrors beyond the wall and pulling viewers into the circle of evil in a sly, devastating way. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/jonathan-glazers-auschwitz-movie-borders-on-the-unwatchable.html)
- **Sight and Sound** (75/100, inferred): The critic highlights Glazer's focus on the Höss family's mundane domestic life against the distant sounds and glimpses of Auschwitz, using detached camerawork and innovative sound design to underscore the banality of evil. Some reservations are noted about the cold replication of the perpetrators' perspective and the choice of this particular story. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/zone-interest-jonathan-glazer-returns-with-haunting-adaptation-martin-amiss-holocaust-novel)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (65/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as technically brilliant and uneasy, praising its focus on the banality of evil through the everyday domestic life of the Auschwitz commandant's family. It notes the power of the sound design and indirect portrayal but questions whether it revives debates about creating slick cinematic effects from historical horrors. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/19/the-zone-of-interest-review-jonathan-glazer-adapts-martin-amiss-chilling-holocaust-drama)
- **Financial Times**, Danny Leigh: Glazer’s film about the humdrum life of commandant Rudolf Höss and his family is full of restless invention and masterful in its evocation of horrors ignored. The evocation of horror ignored is masterful, with inventive elements like thermal imaging and remote-camera vérité. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/80b94629-13f6-49e9-afd7-1cb957d7902a)
- **RogerEbert.com**, Robert Daniels: Glazer's film chillingly depicts the Höss family's mundane domestic life next to Auschwitz, emphasizing sound design and the sanitization of evil over direct horror. The performances by Friedel and Hüller underscore the banality and intimacy of complicity in genocide. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-zone-of-interest-film-review-2023)
- **The New York Times**, Kyle Buchanan: Glazer's disorienting drama uses static wide shots to observe the commandant and his family living adjacent to Auschwitz, creating an eerie surveillance-like effect. The film highlights the contrast between their bucolic routines and the implied atrocities nearby. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/20/movies/zone-of-interest-jonathan-glazer-cannes.html)
- **Digital Spy**, Mireia Mullor (5/5): The review deems it a devastating masterpiece and one of the best films of 2024, a harrowing but necessary watch for its focus on the perpetrators' moral detachment. It singles out the constant, unseen horror conveyed through sound and small details like confiscated clothes. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a46567886/the-zone-of-interest-review/)
- **/Film**, Lex Briscuso (10/10): The critic calls the film a vital, bleak reimagining of the Holocaust drama that effectively uses constant sound design of camp horrors to underscore the family's oblivious domestic life. The reviewer singles out the sound design and the subtle ending revealing the physical toll of unacknowledged evil. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/1292036/the-zone-of-interest-review/)
- **Deadline**, Pete Hammond (90/100, inferred): The critic praises Jonathan Glazer's unique perspective on the Holocaust, focusing on the domestic life of the Auschwitz commandant's family next to the camp without showing violence, making it harrowing and haunting. He singles out the sound design and the authentic recreation of the home life as particularly effective. [Read](https://deadline.com/2023/05/the-zone-of-interest-review-jonathan-glazer-holocaust-movie-cannes-1235372935/)
- **Den of Geek**, David Crow (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it the scariest and most thought-provoking film of the year for its portrayal of the Höss family's mundane domestic life right next to Auschwitz. It singles out the deceptively disinterested, documentary-like gaze that reveals the banality of evil. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-zone-of-interest-is-the-scariest-movie-of-the-year/)
- **The Playlist**, Gregory Ellwood (A-): The critic praises Glazer's fresh approach to depicting the Holocaust through the everyday complicity of the Höss family living next to Auschwitz, highlighted by omnipresent sound design of atrocities and intimate domestic scenes. The reviewer singles out the film's ability to make viewers reflect on modern parallels to authoritarianism and complicity. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/zone-of-interest-cannes-review-jonathan-glazer-20230519/)
- **The Ringer**, Adam Nayman (90/100, inferred): Glazer’s film is unsettling and radical in form, a triumph of soundscaping and negative space that weaponizes what is not shown to convey the banality of evil. The performances, especially by Sandra Hüller and Christian Friedel, vibrate with ambient malevolence amid the compartmentalized domesticity. [Read](https://www.theringer.com/2024/01/25/movies/the-zone-of-interest-movie-review-explained-oscars-jonathan-glazer)
- **Collider**, Ross Bonaime (8/10): The film takes a unique approach to the Holocaust by focusing on the mundane lives of the Höss family next to Auschwitz, building terror through sound and what is not shown. Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller deliver unnerving performances in their restrained, everyday evil. [Read](https://collider.com/the-zone-of-interest-review/)
- **HeyUGuys**, Jack Hawkins (4/5): Glazer presents the Höss family as banal functionaries living next to Auschwitz, using a slow cinema style with eerie acoustics to infer the horrors off-screen. The film echoes the banality of evil by showing the camp as a bureaucratic operation run by careerists rather than monsters. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/the-zone-of-interest-review/)

## Details

- **Director:** Jonathan Glazer
- **Director:** Jonathan Glazer
- **Writer:** Jonathan Glazer
- **Novel:** Martin Amis
- **Cinematography:** Łukasz Żal
- **Editor:** Paul Watts
- **Music:** Joseph Wulf, Mica Levi
- **Production design:** Chris Oddy
- **Costume design:** Małgorzata Karpiuk
- **Producer:** James Wilson, Ewa Puszczyńska
- **Cast:** Christian Friedel as Rudolf Höss; Sandra Hüller as Hedwig Höss; Johann Karthaus as Claus Höss; Luis Noah Witte as Hans Höss; Nele Ahrensmeier as Inge-Brigit Höss; Lilli Falk as Heideraud Höss; Anastazja Drobniak as Annagret Höss; Cecylia Pekala as Annagret Höss
- **Runtime:** 1h 45m
- **First release (France):** 19 May 2023
- **Genres:** Drama, History, War
- **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Nominee, 2023); [Golden Globe Best Drama winners](https://film.one/collections/golden-globe-drama.md) (Nominee, 2023)
- **Budget:** $15 million
- **Box office:** $53 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFNtVaAuVYY

## Where to watch in Bulgaria

Not streaming, renting or buying in Bulgaria at the last check.

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, IE, IN, IT, JP, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PL, PT, SE, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Robert Award for Best Non-American Film 2025: Robert Award for Best Non-American Film (won)
- Academy Awards 2024: Best Picture (nominated); Best International Feature Film (won)
- BAFTA Film Awards 2024: Best British Film (nominated); Best Film Not in the English Language (nominated)
- Golden Globes 2024: Best Motion Picture – Drama (nominated); Best Non-English Language Film (nominated)
- National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director 2024: National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director (won)
- European Film Award for Best Film 2023: European Film Award for Best Film (nominated)
- Gilde Film Price 2023: Gilde Film Price (won)

## If you liked this

- *Son of Saul* (2015), Fi1m 87: The same camp from the other side of the wall, shot in close-up. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/son-of-saul.md)
- *Come and See* (1985), Fi1m 92: The occupation of Belarus through a boy’s eyes; the film Glazer’s is answering. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/come-and-see.md)
- *The Act of Killing* (2012), Fi1m 88: Mass murderers re-enact their crimes cheerfully; the banality without the distance. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-act-of-killing.md)
- *The White Ribbon* (2009), Fi1m 86: A German village before the war, and the children who will grow up in it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-white-ribbon.md)
- *Under the Skin* (2013), Fi1m 81: Glazer and Levi’s earlier film, in which the predator is the one we follow. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/under-the-skin.md)

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-zone-of-interest