Jonathan Glazer’s Nazi drama “The Zone of Interest” has sold into major international territories following its buzzy Cannes world premiere.
The film centers on the family of a high-ranking SS official that lives next door to Auschwitz concentration camp. The pic has sold into: Austria and Germany (Leonine), Benelux (Cineart), France (BAC), Greece (Spentzos), Italy (I Wonder), Japan (Happinet Phantom Studios), Scandinavia (SF Studios), Spain (Elastica) and Switzerland (Filmcoopi).
In Poland — a significant sales market for the film given it is set there — Gutek has come on board as distributor. (A24 was selling worldwide rights for the film, but did not handle the Polish sale.)
The pic was equally financed by A24, which is handling U.S. theatrical distribution, with U.K.-based studio Film4 and the Len Blavatnik-backed Access Entertainment.
“The Zone of Interest” was written and directed by Glazer. The movie is based on the 2014 novel by British author Martin Amis, whose death was announced just a day after the movie’s bow in Cannes.
The pic stars Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller, who give restrained but powerful performances as a Nazi couple seemingly unfazed by the horrors taking place next door.
Producers include James Wilson and Ewa Puszcyńska.
In his Variety review, critic Owen Gleiberman said of “The Zone of Interest”: “It’s a remarkable film — chilling and profound, meditative and immersive, a movie that holds human darkness up to the light and examines it as if under a microscope. In a sense, it’s a movie that plays off our voyeurism, our curiosity to see the unseeable. Yet it does so with a bracing originality.”