Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest’ Had 360-Degree Sets With Multiple Cameras Shooting Simultaneously

Last month, I wasn’t quite hearing the same thing as Sean L. Malin, who was reporting that Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” was being tipped to premiere at Cannes.

In fact, Glazer’s post-production process has been very slow, meticulous and unique, according to my source. Yes, Cannes is still a little less than two months away, but Glazer’s taking his time with this one.

A week or so ago, a Deadline piece previewing the potential Cannes films added Glazer’s film to its possibilities, adding that it should be ready for the festival. What?!

We hear the film is likely to be ready in time for Cannes but none of the director’s three previous films have launched on the Croisette so the guessing game will go on.

“The Zone of Interest” has been in post for many months now, with some reshoots having been done. I reached out to my source to comment on this story and they told me the film is still not ready.

Back in the summer, I reported an exclusive — that Glazer was in a unique post-production phase on this film. In a nutshell, he was considering the idea of multiple cuts for “The Zone of Interest”. Perhaps not just different lengths, but maybe also different points of views for each cut.

Now we have someone on the Reddit kind of alluding to this, but also stating how arduously taxing the whole shoot was for the Polish cast and crew, to the point where a few people actually quit due to how demanding the whole thing was:

I was with a low budget film in the middle of last year and the film's production designer had left the Glazer film the previous week where she had been working as a set dresser. She told me that the film had been shooting in Poland and that Glazer had been extremely fixated on period accuracy. He didn't want anything to be aged. She had sourced 1930s and 1940s era props and fixtures and that had been fine. What was less fine was that he would set up 360-degree sets with multiple cameras shooting simultaneously, "he would edit out the cameras in post", she told me. "Jonathan doesn't describe himself as a director. He's thinks of himself as an intuitive storyteller, which sounds great, but it's really fucking annoying." So a LOT of furniture, props etc, were never used because he would just be holding a close up for a scene, like that, and that was it.

She also said that most of the crew were Polish and, given that the film is, at least in part about the home life of Joseph Goebbles, that they were having a difficult time with some of the scenes he was shooting, particularly one that I won't spoil, that was very very long and very very harrowing and kind of similar to the beach scene from Under the Skin. She said it was "literal hair on your neck standing up scene after a few minutes. But he ran the scene for over 30 minutes. Apparently a lot of the crew were weeping and quite a few of them quit. She quit herself one week out from the end of the shoot because she was over the whole "demanding genius white male visionary producer" thing. She had worked on quite a few films before as an actress, production designer and set dresser and did a great job on the film I met her on.

Just ignore the “demanding genius white male visionary” quip. The rest of this is absolutely fascinating, especially the parts about the 360-degree sets.

One would assume that this has to do with the “multiple cuts” Glazer concocted out of this film. Alas, if it goes to Cannes, it does sound like a major player for the Palme d’Or, at least on-paper. I’m just not too sure if it’ll be ready on time.

The parents in “The Zone of Interest” will be played by award-winning actors Sandra Hüller (Toni Erdmann) and Christian Friedel (Amour Fou). This inevitably leads to speculation as to whether Glazer’s upcoming holocaust drama will be in Polish and German. This would be the filmmaker’s first non-English film.

I honestly wouldn’t put it past Glazer to bring this one to Venice, where he premiered two of the three movies he’s directed. ‘Zone’ is being produced by A24 and is set to be Glazer’s first film since 2013’s critically-heralded “Under the Skin.”

Lukasz Zal (“Cold War”, “Ida”) is credited as the DP. Glazer is known to take his time in post-production. There was a 24-month timeframe between the 2011 shoot of “Under the Skin” and its 2013 world premiere at Telluride.