A true one-off in cinematic story telling. A film that confronts the worst aspect of human atrocity that occured during the Third Reich's reign of terror, without actually taking you into the camps. Yet somehow this method makes it more powerful than any other film made on the subject (imo). It achieves this power by juxtapositioning the mundanity of family life centered around a home adjacent to Auschwitz, against the hell on earth occuring on the other side of the wall, a hell that you never see but only hear. But more than that, the film drives home how successfully the Nazis dehumanised Jews (and others), to the point that the Hoss family (of which the father oversees the running of the camp) feel they're living the most idyllic life a German could imagine, whilst the industrial slaughter of over a million people is literally happening a few metres away. It's beyond disturbing and viscerally frightening and after 80 years, unfortunately a story that we need to be reminded of again and again and again.
Review of The Zone of Interest
