Back to the Big Screen: "The Zone of Interest" (2023) [PG-13]

Brought to you by the Upper School Film Immersion: Film as Philosophy Course 

 

 

Join the members of the Film Immersion: Film as Philosophy course at Back to the Big Screen with a presentation of the 2023 film The Zone of Interest. (trailer)

The film centers on the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoss, and his wife, Hedwig, who strive to build a dream life for their family in a garden estate which happens to be located right next to this historical death camp of the Holocaust during one of the darkest chapters in world history. Through deep respect and powerful restraint, director Jonathan Glazer never allows cameras to pass through the gates of the camp, which notoriously and contradictingly read, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Will Set You Free). This detachment from the visual atrocities occurring beyond the perimeter of the cinematic frame enables a sonic perspective of what is out of sight to form, allowing the film to convey the true horrors just over the wall of the Hoss family’s idyllic homemaking through creating an immersive experience framed by observations of their domestic life and its interiority. 

This set-up models and mirrors our modern ability to curate perfection while being fully aware of –and compartmentalizing– the global atrocities occurring just out of frame. Thinker Hannah Arendt articulated the dangers of this predicament constituting what she deemed as the “Banality of evil”. The film raises the vital question: How much of our own comfort is built on a “wall” that covers up the suffering of others?

- Film Immersion: Film as Philosophy 2026 members