Jonathan Glazer rocks Cannes with a chilling Holocaust drama from a different perspective

Jonathan Glazer's 'The Zone of Interest,' a chilling Auschwitz-set drama shot through 'a 21st century lens,' has delivered the Cannes Film Festival's first critical sensation by approaching the Holocaust from an unlikely perspective.

Jonathan Glazer's "The Zone of Interest," a chilling Auschwitz-set drama shot through "a 21st century lens," has delivered the Cannes Film Festival's first critical sensation by approaching the Holocaust from an unlikely perspective.

"The Zone of Interest," which premiered to rave reviews Friday night, dramatizes the life of a fictional German family whose handsome home and tasteful gardens abut the outer wall of Auschwitz. There, they live a mostly peaceful, mundane life, while incinerators rumble in the background, smoke rises from the gas chambers, and muffled screams can be heard.

The father is Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel), a Nazi commandant who designed Auschwitz, who lives with his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Huller) and children. "The Zone of Interest," loosely based on a Martin Amis novel, rigorously follows the family's daily lives while atrocity thrums next door.

"What it's trying to do is talk to the capacity within each of us for violence, wherever you're from, and to try to show these people as people and not as monsters was a very important thing to do," Glazer told reporters Tuesday. "The great crime and tragedy is that human beings did this to other human beings."

"It's very convenient to distance ourselves from them as much as we can because we think we don't behave that way," added Glazer. "But we should be less certain than that."

Following its premiere, "The Zone of Interest" quickly rose to the top of forecasts for the Palme d'Or, the festival's top prize to be handed out May 27. Critics lauded the film's formal rigour in capturing the capacity of people to compartmentalize horror.

"The Zone of Interest," Glazer's first film since 2013's grimly elegant science fiction "Under the Skin," proceeds largely without story in almost documentary fashion. It's set almost entirely in the orderly hallways and flower beds of the Hoss home. Glazer said he and his filmmaking team, using up to 10 cameras at once, tried "to make ourselves as absent as possible, almost as authorless as possible."