'Zone of Interest': How the Oscar-nominated Holocaust drama depicts an 'ambient genocide'

“The Zone of Interest” offers a chilling new perspective on the Holocaust.

Nominated for five Oscars including best picture, the film (in theaters nationwide Friday) is set just outside the walls of Auschwitz at a stately villa, where real-life Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) lives with his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), their five kids and a pet dog.

What makes the movie uniquely harrowing is that you never set foot inside the concentration camp, nor do you witness violence onscreen. Rather, the audience is subjected to distant screams and gunshots as the blasé Höss family goes about their daily lives: playing in the pool, lounging in the backyard or eating dinner together.

"I hesitated to be a part of it because I didn't dream of portraying a Nazi woman," Hüller says. But speaking to director and co-writer Jonathan Glazer, she was compelled by his "smart artistic choices," depicting the subject matter in a way "I had never seen before."

Glazer “was not interested in sensationalizing these atrocities,” says Johnnie Burn, an Oscar nominee for best sound. “It’s fundamental that everyone has their own understanding of what happened there. These mental images we all have are quite easy to reproduce through the suggestion of sound.”

'The Zone of Interest' is a Holocaust movie about 'the darkness inside us'

Burn compiled 600 pages of research to ensure historical accuracy, detailing what times of day that transport trains arrived and executions of Jewish prisoners took place. As Rudolf and Hedwig chat idly in bed, you can hear the dull roar of crematorium furnaces just outside their window. At other times, it’s hard to place where exactly a dog’s barks or infant’s cries are coming from.

“Am I hearing the children screaming in fun in the garden, or is it something else more ghastly?” Burn says. The sounds of the concentration camp were added entirely in post-production, allowing the cast to approach the script as a “family drama” rather than the horror film it really is.

“That’s what gives you that extraordinary feeling of, ‘I know you can close your eyes but you can’t close your ears, so how come you’re not hearing what I’m hearing?’” Burn says. “This ambient genocide pervading all their mundane worries and troubles is why the film works.”

For Hüller, it was important not to understand or humanize her icy matriarch, who boasts that she’s “the Queen of Auschwitz.”

“We wouldn’t research them too much, because we didn’t want to psychologize any behavior,” the German actress says. Shooting in Poland not far from the original camp, “we as people were very aware of what had taken place in this area at this period of time. But it was easy to let the characters forget it.”

Amid conversations about spa days and home improvements, Glazer drops in disturbing reminders of the Höss family’s indifference. Hedwig tries on lipstick and a fur coat confiscated from the dead, while one of her sons collects gold teeth. In another stomach-churning scene, Rudolf furiously scrubs ash off his body after swimming in a nearby river, where he discovered a human jawbone hours earlier.

Friedel's biggest challenge was to give “this evil person a human face” through his “banal actions at home.” The film illustrates how many ordinary people felt emboldened by the Nazi party, willing to turn a blind eye in exchange for wealth and power. The real Höss was ultimately hanged for his war crimes in 1947.

"He thought he was a really important person, but he absolutely wasn’t,” Friedel says. “This is not only a movie about the Holocaust – it’s about our decisions, the darkness inside us and what we are capable of.”

Oscar best actress nominee Sandra Hüller also stars in 'Anatomy of a Fall'

“The Zone of Interest” is one of two movies that Hüller, 45, has in Oscar contention this season. She is also nominated for best actress for “Anatomy of a Fall,” a French courtroom thriller vying for best picture and best director (Justine Triet). In the film, Hüller plays an author who’s charged with her husband’s murder after he suspiciously plunges from their chalet balcony.  

“It’s really rare to have a multidimensional woman character these days,” Hüller says of her “Anatomy” role. “I like so many things about her: the way she stands up for herself and how she is unapologetic about her choices."

Hüller has been traversing the globe for months promoting “Anatomy” and “Zone,” which both won top prizes at Cannes Film Festival in France last May. Despite her grueling travel schedule, she’s grateful that they’ve each been embraced so immensely.

“Women tend to say, ‘I was very lucky,’ because they tend to underestimate their own work,” Hüller says. “I know that I did really good work. I also know that I was very lucky. No one could have known that both films would be finished at the same time and enter into competition at Cannes. So I enjoy it very much, but at the same time, I’m ready to go home.”