Creating fiction works about the Holocaust may be the most challenging task in cinema and many filmmakers have blundered into the field armed with sentiment rather than intellectual seriousness. One remarkable exception is Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest”, which won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes.

Ostensibly based on Martin Amis’s 2014 novel “The Zone of Interest”, the film bears tangential relation to the book, stripping away its multiple intrigues and sardonic black humour for a minimalist and more strictly severe focus on its central topic: the domestic life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, who have created a cosily luxurious home for themselves and their children at the very edge of Auschwitz.

United Kingdom’s nominee for the Best International Film Oscar.

(Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily)