The zone of interest, Jonathan Glazer, 2023

On the one hand, lush vegetable gardens and colorful gardens, the laughter and screams of children chasing each other on the lawn, the afternoons of conversations with friends, the parties filled with alcohol and chatter between men, the bunk beds in pastel tones in the rooms of the boys playing war on the floor: the bucolic and luxuriant life that flows at a slow pace.

On the other, the always smoking gray chimneys, the screams of children separated from their parents, the mornings and afternoons, the evenings, the nights, the entire days dedicated to survival.
The bunk beds are piled up in dark pavilions like shelves in warehouses for temporary and short-term 'loads'. Wetting what remains of the bodies and clothes are the tears of desperation, the sweat of terror, the snow in which they sink their feet in the calls for dawn in the winter in the East. The soldiers are in the flesh, the rifles fire really and on that side, on the other side, no one is playing war because the war is real.

Under the same European sky, dividing two worlds, a wall and a hedge, "which excludes the gaze from so much of the final horizon", the poet would say. The gaze, however, here, belongs to those who do not want to look but can and the shipwreck is anything but sweet.

The 'garden of paradise' stands on the edge of hell and what cannot be seen but heard is much stronger, much more powerful and much more violent than what is seen and not heard. In the contrast, in the differences, the planning and implementation of a project of suffering, death and extermination in a short time become indelible and undeniable, with the intention of expanding the living space of some, annihilating the personal and ethnic identity of the others. It could be said that, as in every story, justice and correctness depend on what point the story is observed or told, but in this case if the sky is the same the air you breathe is also the same and the executioners are they will find themselves trying to expel the ash and dust remains of their victims with strangled coughs, condemning themselves, even before History does, even without any shadow of repentance.

The almost total absence of music leaves room for gray, metallic, disturbed and disturbing sound effects and sounds that tell what lies outside the frame and beyond the wall and act as the background to an everyday life that is as banal and frivolous as it is terrifying.

Full figures, medium shots, American and total shots, no close-ups or very close-ups, because this is not a personal or intimate story but a long-term story that involves us all, from the past to the present and beyond any geography.

The zone of interest is a film that talks about the Holocaust without talking about it and without making it seen but making it heard. The caliber is very high. After Glazer, a next film on the topic, with a different and higher directorial vision, will be a challenge, if not impossible, at least arduous.