Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest’ Sets December A24 Release and Shares Two New Images

Jonathan Glazer’s chilling Holocaust portrait “The Zone of Interest” received a six-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival this year — and eventually its Grand Jury Prize.

IndieWire now exclusively shares the A24 film’s release date, set for a limited opening on December 8 in time for awards season. A24 also shares two new images from the film featuring Christian Friedel as Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and Sandra Hüller as his wife and accomplice Hewdig Höss. At that same Cannes, Hüller also starred in Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall.”

The film’s official synopsis belies what’s going on under the surface, as Rudolf and Hedwig “strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden” directly adjacent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where Höss was the longest-serving chief commander.

This is Glazer’s first feature since 2013’s cult classic “Under the Skin” starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien succubus among us. That film featured an improvisatory approach to the camerawork, with Johansson situated in an unmarked van installed with crew members and hidden cameras. As her extra-terrestrial character trawls the streets of Glasgow and elsewhere in Ireland looking for male victims, Johansson and the crew approached and filmed non-professionals on the street before then asking permission to use the footage. “Zone of Interest,” which Glazer adapted from the late Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, similarly finds the director in an innovative mode: He devised 360-degree sets with multiple cameras installed throughout and later edited out in post-production, giving the film the unsettling quality of surveillance.

Łukasz Żal, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer of Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Ida” and “Cold War,” serves as the director of photography, with Paul Watts editing. “Zone of Interest” is scored by composer Mica Levi. Glazer and Levi have collaborated together on the short films “Strasbourg 1518” and “The Fall” since first teaming up for “Under the Skin,” and Levi’s ever-experimental contributions have been widely praised since “Zone’s” Cannes debut. (Read IndieWire’s review here.)

James Wilson and Ewa Puszcyńska produced “The Zone of Interest.” Executive producers include Reno Antoniadis, Ollie Madden, David Kimbangi, Tessa Ross of House Productions, Len Blavatnik and Danny Cohen from Access Entertainment. The film was co-financed by A24, Film4, Access Entertainment, and the Polish Film Institute.

Below, see another new image from “The Zone of Interest,” which will next play the Toronto International Film Festival and looks likely to premiere at Telluride in September as well. It opens theatrically December 8.