About The Zone of Interest
The commandant of Auschwitz and his wife raise their children in a tidy garden house on the other side of the camp wall. Jonathan Glazer shoots the family in clinical wide masters and lets the soundtrack — designed by Johnnie Burn — carry everything else. One of the formally bravest films released this century.
Released in 2023 and running a tight 1h 45m, The Zone of Interest sits firmly in the drama tradition that American art-house cinemas have spent the last two decades quietly defending. The film is rated PG-13 and presented in German, with English subtitles at participating venues.
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Jonathan Glazer belongs to the cohort of directors whose work tends to land first at festivals — Sundance, Locarno, the New York Film Festival, SXSW — before opening on a small handful of screens in New York and Los Angeles and then rolling out, week by week, to the independent circuit elsewhere in the country. The Zone of Interest is part of that pipeline. It is the only title from Jonathan Glazer currently in our directory; if you want to keep tabs on the director's other work, follow festival-circuit coverage from the outlets that track independent distribution.
Cast
The principal cast — Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Johann Karthaus — is the kind of ensemble that art-house audiences will recognize from adjacent festival titles. Independent casting tends to favor performers who can carry a long take, hold a quiet scene, and trust a director's control of pace; this film is no exception.
Where to watch The Zone of Interest
Our seasonal catalog — an editorial sample of the circuit, not a live ticketing feed — places it at independent cinemas in 12 US cities. Coverage is deepest in:
- Somerville, MA — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- Fredonia, NY — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Elk Grove Village, IL — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Austin, TX — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Tampa, FL — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Ambler, PA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Wilkes-Barre, PA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Bluffton, OH — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Petaluma, CA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Oxford, MS — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Osage, IA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Watertown, CT — listed at 1 independent cinema.
If your city isn't on the list, the film may still surface on a future repertory week or festival weekend; check our full cinema directory.
Why it belongs on the indie circuit
The independent and art-house exhibition circuit exists to surface films like this one — work that doesn't fit the wide-release calendar, doesn't have the marketing budget of a studio tentpole, and depends instead on programmers, critics, and word-of-mouth to find an audience. The Zone of Interest is a clean fit for that model: a 1h 45m drama work, made outside the studio system, that benefits from being seen on a real screen with a real audience rather than queued up on a streaming dashboard. The cinemas in the cities listed above are the venues doing that work for this title.
Cross-references
If you are building a viewing schedule around this film, our Drama genre hub indexes adjacent work in the same tradition.