The Zone of Interest is Jonathan Glazer’s 2023 film, loosely adapted from Martin Amis’s novel, about the family of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss living beside the camp wall. Glazer described it as two films, the one seen and the one heard: the killing is never shown and reaches the audience only through a constant soundtrack from beyond the wall.
The sound designer Johnnie Burn wrote around 600 pages of research on how the camp might have sounded and, at Glazer’s request, avoided generic sound libraries in favour of fresh recordings, including gunfire at a firing range on the Isle of Wight and men shouting during a strike in Paris. Under the domestic scenes runs a low, unceasing hum of machinery, distant voices and shots. Mica Levi’s music, added late, is confined to an overture and a closing piece. At the 2024 Academy Awards Burn and Tarn Willers won Best Sound and the film won Best International Feature.