Director Jonathan Glazer is one of the true visionaries to have emerged in the film circuit the last decade. After all, his ultra-stylized 2000 gangster film “Sexy Beast” turned heads for its stunning visual palette However, Glazer only got better after that, having given us only two films since then: the highly underrated “Birth,” and his masterpiece: “Under the Skin,” starring Scarlett Johansson as a roaming alien sent to London to feed off of innocent and pathetic male pedestrians. ”Under the Skin” was one of the great achievements of this last decade, even being named the 12th best movie of the 2010s in our mega critics poll. Needless to say, its been 7 years since that movie and Glazer seems to have taken his time to make his next one.
Today we learned that Glazer has actually been shooting a new film since August in Auschwitz, Poland. This is stunning news given that this latest project has been delaying its production for quite a few years now. The shoot is set to continue for another month, at least. A Cannes 2022 World Premiere is such an obvious possibility at this point.
What we do know about this new project, a holocaust-set story, is that Glazer has been working on it for nearly five years, with A24 attached to produce. The film is said to be based on author Martin Amis’ novel “The Zone Of Interest.” The book synopsis tells the story of a Nazi officer who finds himself falling for the wife of the camp’s commandant. The plot follows their torrid, love affair, while the spurned husband begins to suspect his wife.
Speaking a few months ago on the A Dash of Drash podcast, Glazer mentioned being horrified by pictures of the Holocaust as a child. “I remember being very taken by the faces of the bystanders, the onlookers, the complicit, you know? Ordinary Germans,” he said. “I started wondering how it would be possible to stand by and watch that. Some of the faces actually enjoy it. The spectacle of it. The kinda circus of it.”
Glazer is Jewish and attended a Jewish school, but it seems as though he wouldn't just be focusing on just the concentration camps, rather, also the outside zones, the citizens that knew what was going on, but let it go on, turning a blind eye.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.