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European cinema is having a great year on an international level. Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest’ has been named Best Film of the Year by Los Angeles Film Critics Association, while German actress Sandra Hüller continues her awards sweep with win for Best Actress.
ADVERTISEMENTBritish director Jonathan Glazer’s harrowing and stylistically audacious Auschwitz-set drama, The Zone of Interest, has been named best movie of the year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
The critics group, which announced its picks late Sunday after a day-long meeting, also awarded prizes for Glazer’s directing and Mica Levi’s score. The Zone of Interest had previously won Cannes’ Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize this year.
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association selected Sandra Hüller, who stars in both The Zone of Interest and the Palme d’Or winning French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, for one of its two lead performance awards.
Stay tuned to Euronews Culture for our interview with Sandra Hüller.
The Zone of Interest was disappointingly snubbed at the European Film Awards last weekend, a ceremony which saw Anatomy of a Fall hoover up the awards, winning Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress for Hüller, and Best Screenplay. The lack of variety in the prizes is a pity and sadly does not reflect the full extent of the European Film Awards’ mission to celebrate the diversity of European cinema – especially in a year as strong as 2023.
Thankfully, other international awards are paying notice, and no one would be in the least bit suprised to see both The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall continue to fill up their awards chest during the continuing awards season, leading up to the Oscars on 11 March 2024.
Glazer’s film is loosely based on Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, and is the British director’s first feature in 10 years, following 2013’s Under The Skin. It follows Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), who both build a dream life for their family in their home situated on the other side of the concentration camp wall. We observe the everyday domesticity of the family: friendly visits, servants keeping the house spotless, Hedwig tending to her Edenic “paradise garden” and appreciating the living space she has built next to a dying one.
Hundreds of films have tackled the subject of the Holocaust, but few have achieved what Glazer has with The Zone of Interest. Many like Schindler’s List and Son of Saul have evoked the unimaginable horrors of what happened within the walls of concentration camps and several have touched upon what Hannah Arendt referred to as the “banality of evil”. Few however have taken that concept and brought it to the screen in such a chilling way, exploring not only the banality behind evil but the troublingly identifiable humanity behind the lives of those who perpetrate the most unspeakable of crimes.
Glazer’s film is, on a formal level, a daring masterstroke which breaks conventional expectations when it comes to similar premises. Film students will be dining out on this one for years to come, analysing (amongst many other things) the way the framing and sparsely used travelling shots convey so much, as well as the effect created by the sudden monochrome screens with composer Mica Levi’s droning alarm sounds – which feel like they’re emanating from the deepest bowels of Hades.
There is so much to appreciate and unpick in Glazer’s audacious depiction of the Final Solution. It has already made our Top European Films of the 21st Century list, and it will be released in European cinemas at the beginning of 2024.
Elsewhere, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, which doesn’t delineate gender in its acting categories, gave all four of its acting awards to women.
In the lead acting category, the winners were Hüller and Emma Stone, the star of Yorgos Lanthimos’ fantastic Frankenstein riff Poor Things, which won the Golden Lion in Venice this year.
The supporting performance prizes went to Rachel McAdams for the Judy Blume adaptation Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; and to Da’Vine Joy Randolph, co-star of the boarding school comedy-drama The Holdovers.
Here is the full list of the picks by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association:
- Best Film: The Zone of Interest
- Best Director: Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
- Best Lead Performance: Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest; and Emma Stone, Poor Things
- Best Supporting Performance: Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
- Best Non-English Language Film: Anatomy of a Fall
- New Generation Award: Celine Song, Past Lives
- Best Screenplay: Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers
- Best Documentary: Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros
- Best Animated Film: The Boy and the Heron
- Best Editing: Laurent Sénéchal, Anatomy of a Fall
- Best Production Design: Sarah Greenwood, Barbie
- Best Score: Mica Levi, The Zone of Interest, with a recognition also of sound designer Johnnie Burn
- Best Cinematography: Robbie Ryan, Poor Things
- Douglas Edwards Experimental Film Prize: Youth (Spring)
- Career Achievement Award: Agnieszka Holland
Stay tuned to Euronews Culture for our interviews with Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros director Frederick Wiseman, The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall ‘s Sandra Hüller and Agnieszka Holland, who recieved this year’s Career Achievement Award.
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