Alex: Hello and welcome to this celebration of movie excellence in 2024. I'm Alex Zane, and this is Countdown to the BAFTAs, where in this series we look back at five movies that were longlisted along with the nominees for that most coveted award: Best film at the EE BAFTA Film Awards 2024.
This time, it's the Zone of Interest.
Jim Wilson: The subject of our film is the perpetrator. We want to put the audience in the perspective of the perpetrators, of the Hösses.
Alex: In this wide ranging interview, we discuss the creative spark that started it all and the challenges they faced bringing it to the screen. And a quick warning, we will be talking about the story. This is Countdown to the BAFTAs.
Alex: Jim, it's wonderful to have you on the show. Let me first start by saying congratulations. How does it feel that the Zone of Interest has been recognised by the BAFTA members?
Jim Wilson: It feels, um, amazing to be recognised by, uh, BAFTA members in the, in these longlists that have come out. You know, you've obviously got no idea when you're making a film about any of that and it can't really become part of your expectations, but I suppose, um, I think there were sort of particular elements about this film in terms of its subject matter and its form, you know, structurally, its style, the way it's made, its language, not that its language should necessarily be an issue, but, you know, the fact that it's a film not in English.
And perhaps just overall its its, its idea and its, its structure which in some ways borders something, I don't know, almost experimental in some ways in terms of it's not got a story in a traditional way, or characters I think really in a traditional way.
And its structure is quite interesting in the way it shifts to somewhere else at the end. So, um, I think for a film that feels and looks like this to be part of, that BAFTA conversation, I, in some ways I suppose I'm saying it feels like the kind of film that perhaps isn't normally recognized, by, you know, fantastic, like, main, mainstream awards, like BAFTA.
So it feels really exciting to be part of that conversation.
Alex: And I want to talk to you more about, um, the fact that this really isn't a conventional movie in the classic sense but before that I'd like to take you back to the beginning of your journey because I know Jonathan Glazer first became interested in making this film after he read a preview of Martin Amis’ novel of the same name and you've worked with Jonathan before. You obviously produced Under the Skin in 2013.
Do you remember the first conversation you had with Jonathan about this film potentially being your next project together?
Jim Wilson: Yes, I do remember that. I mean, one thing I'd say is it goes back a bit before that time, actually, of when Jon read that, preview that you mentioned. You're right. He read a, sort of capsule preview in a newspaper and sent it to me but that, that itself came after a period of quite some time, probably a year or more maybe, of us talking and thinking about a film with this subject matter, the subject matter I guess of Nazism, the Nazi project, I suppose you could say the Holocaust, but it, even in our thinking it went beyond.
You know, we were thinking not just about a film, about a concentration camp, but we were thinking about the subject as a whole, and how to address that, and I think it was something we, certainly something Jon had been interested in for a long time, and he talked about that through his life, before even filmmaking, and, and myself as well, um, reading and thinking. And so it, so we'd been looking, and we'd been looking in a focused way for a couple of years, reading books, researching history, thinking, stories, plays, all sorts of things. Very aware of the weight of, other representations of this in films. Of World War II, Nazism, the Holocaust, and the tropes and the clichés and films that loom over it. You know, from Schindler's List to Son of Saul, and everything in between, and how, what to say. That was worth saying and interesting to us.
And so then that point arrived that you just said.
So yeah, I remember, uh, yeah, I remember very much him, him sending me this, uh, this, uh, preview, uh, of the Martin Amis novel, The Zone of Interest, and what it was, it was part of the description of it, which was that, it was about a Nazi concentration camp. In the novel it's not named as Auschwitz. It's a fictional concentration camp that is clearly based on Auschwitz once you start to look into it, and, uh, all the characters are fictional. It's not Rudolf and Hedwig Höss, it's not Auschwitz. And part of the novel is from the perspective of the family and the Commandant's private and domestic world, but also his work world.
It's not just set in the house and garden. And also the novel has other perspectives in it too. There's a prisoner character that you see things from. And, and other, uh, people. But this, this little review definitely focused on that part of it. And it was that, it was that idea of the point of view that seemed to Jonathan and I agreed to be instantly kind of interesting, and not one we'd fully, thought of in our, thinking about the subject.
And so we got the book, obviously, and we both read it, and um, and that was the beginning, and it was that. Jonathan has this, John has this phrase that he often uses, like the atom splitter, sort of, you know, about when you're trying to kind of find the essence of an idea, the sort of haiku, the sort of North Star.
That idea of this, uh, perpetrator perspective on this event and one that treated it from the point of view of, of the world of, of home and I guess work, rather than the perspective of the victim, which is typically the way, the Holocaust, um, is, uh, narrated.
And that, that would be a way into asking some interesting questions about these events that was sort of I suppose in essence were that it wasn't about the suffering of the victims of the violence, but about the indifference of the perpetrators to that violence that is happening over the wall.
Alex: And you decided on actually using the real couple, Rudolf Höss and Hedwig Höss, so so, in creating this often very mundane family environment in the household, you obviously had a lot of research to do. Can you tell us a little bit about the journey you went on in discovering actual nuggets of fact about what this couple were like in this house?
Jim Wilson: There was a process of thinking about adapting the Amis novel as it was, with the fictional characters and the fictional story, which was kind of a love, it was a marital triangle, for Jon that quickly ran aground, it was like, I don't wanna make a foreground story that's set against the backdrop of Auschwitz , in researching what Martin Amis had how he'd written the novel, we quickly found out about the real Höss family and the life they lived in this house and garden, which was exactly next to, the proximity you see in the film is an exact facsimile of the real proximity to the camp that we saw when we visited Auschwitz. So having kind of put the book away, it was our doorway into it, absolutely our starting point.
We started researching and that, yeah, that was a sort of period of, gosh, like probably two, three years of research before putting pen to paper. And that involved you know, obviously we were reading and talking and meeting people in London. We were also going to the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum in Poland.
One of the main things, Alex, was we engaged a couple of researchers. We had a brilliant researcher that we worked with in the UK, Lucy Pardee. was also a BAFTA winning casting director. And we had a research producer from Poland. Our friend Bartek Rainski, and through him we engaged, uh, talked a lot to historians and scholars at the museum, part of which is a research department.
And then we engaged two researchers to work within the museum's archives, going through the archives. They have, you know, obviously hundreds of thousands of pages of, written archives, a lot of which is, um, witness testimony that was gathered, in, you know, immediately after the war as, testimonies of survivors, people who worked in the camp, um, perpetrators, imprisoned perpetrators, um, all sorts of people in the area.
And probably the massive bulk of it is about, is about the events and the atrocities and the mass murder and the, and the plight and the fate of the victims of the violence, the prisoners. But we weren't looking for that, because that wasn't what the subject of our film is. The subject of our film is the perpetrator.
Um, we want to put the audience in the perspective of the perpetrators, of the Hösses. Um, and so the researchers’, um, criteria was to search through all those archives, picking out any reference to the Hösses. It was a, it was sort of like a process of gathering and they were doing that for months, months and months and months and months and months. And they would send us, um. You know, obviously most of it was not translated yet, so it had to be translated. It would be in Polish.
And they would be testimonies from, prisoners who worked in the house. You know, the gardeners, the Polish maids, the girls you see, depicted in the, uh, in the film. Marta and, and, and Jela, who are, who are, who are their real, those are their real names, the real local Polish girls who, who worked in the, in the Höss house.
And we would also look for, in our research, as both within the museum and in reading, the lives of SS, uh, officers and people, their, their private lives. There's a brilliant book written by one of the main historians at the museum that we work with a lot called, Piotr Setkiewicz.
And he wrote a book called Private Lives of the SS that was all about that perspective. So that was a bit of a bible for us, and John describes it as a process of gathering, but we didn't really still know what the story was, because that was just, almost like slices of life, like you say, really.
And then it was like, well, how do we build these together? We've found, you know, there's this episode here, or this moment here, or a snatch of conversation here. I mean, a good example of one from Private Lives of the SS would be, there's that sequence where Hedwig is having coffee with some of her friends and having a gossip in the kitchen.
[FILM SOUND BITE]
And in the next room, Rudolf is having a meeting with the oven crematorium engineers about this big new crematorium that they're sort of pitching him to, to commission.
[FILM SOUND BITE]
And, uh, the wives are nattering and about, “oh Helga Palic, let her adopt that Polish boy to keep her happy and I heard he beats her up.”
And that was all taken from, some anecdotes we heard, that gossip is you know, a real thing and, and, and then sort of transmuted into that dialogue.
And then Jon's task, an immense one really, was sort of how to shape that into some sort of structure and shape. And actually one of the key moments in that that leads to the point of time of where the film is in this quote, unquote story, 'cause it's not really a story, it's more about an idea. It's about, it's a film, about the place and about the idea of the proximity to this systematic violence and the indifference from it was, finding out a bit, um, of testimony about, a reaction Hedwig had to the idea of having to leave Auschwitz.
Um, where she said, “are you kidding, you'd have to drag me out of here, this is, why would I leave this place, it's paradise.”
[FILM SOUND BITE]
That was another atom splitter for Jon he was like, oh, wow, that, that's it. That, that's the that's the kind of fulcrum, I can make that an axiomatic centrepiece of the film. Of this mother, this woman, this homemaker, who's built the dream life for her five children and doesn't want to leave this place. And the place is Auschwitz.
[FILM SOUND BITE]
Alex: And in terms of Rudolf Höss and Hedwig Höss, let's talk about the casting of Sandra Hüller and Christian Friedel in these roles. If we talk about Sandra, first of all, how did you first approach her about taking the role of Hedwig? Was it in person? Was it done remotely? Did you meet her and tell her about what the film was going to be about?
Or how did that take place with her? What was her reaction?
Jim Wilson: With Sandra, we were aware of Sandra, Jon and I through probably like most, you know, non-German audiences through, Toni Erdmann. And obviously we, as I've described, we were developing the script for a long time, for, you know, five years. So we were obviously thinking about, uh, actors. So she was certainly in our minds, because I thought she was incredible, uh, in that role.
Where it became real is we started working with a German, obviously we had to work with a German casting director, and we, we, we chose to work with a brilliant, brilliant casting director called Simone Barr, who very sadly passed away, at the beginning of last, last year, um, after doing the film, and Simone cast the film.Very eminent German film casting director, and, we were talking to her about it, and Simone suggested Sandra as the first Hedwig. We never got to a second idea.
And then we met Sandra, um, in Berlin, and we just talked in a quite general way, actually, uh, about it. And I remember that first meeting very well. And, uh, it sounds a bit kind of corny and cliché, but, but it's true. Yes, it was a really, strikingly powerful first meeting where she just seemed like indelibly that she was Hedwig that was just based on conversation about the film, um, and was the beginning of a long process for her where she didn't yet decide whether she wanted to do the film, which took quite a long time for her to finally decide to do it.
She talked about the film, she talked about Hedwig in an incredible way. And she started to, she even did some physical things. We've remembered it in some of our conversations about the film more recently now that it's out.
But I remember her standing up and talking about how she felt Hedwig would garden, because the garden is so key to Hedwig, her garden, her pride in her garden, and she talked about how her grandmother used to weed, and she, I remember she sort of planted her feet apart in that kind of horizontal kind of thing and started kind of, you know, pulling up weeds from the carpet, you know, miming them like, um, and um, and she's, yeah, she's sort of physically changed herself.
It is that gait she, she has in the film. I recognise it now. So, um, yeah, in this first meeting she just put a kind of indelible stamp on it. And, and, and we, we knew, John knew she was Hedwig. And then there was a process of persuading her to, to be Hedwig. But that's how it began with Sandra.
Alex: When we look at Christian, that was a slightly different journey. I believe he made a self tape. He was made aware that Jonathan was making another movie and sent a self tape without knowing what the film was about. That was his initial contact with you and the film.
Jim Wilson: Well, yes, I mean, I suppose he, he knows less of what was happening before, so it was around a similar timeline, but, we certainly knew Christian, we were aware of Christian from White Ribbon. You know, again, probably like most international audiences who would go and see foreign language films.
So I remember very well, um, being in Berlin with Simone and her casting associate Alexandra Montag.
And, um, Christian was, um, Simone's suggestion and she made a video, I think of four or five German actors and Christian was the first. And there was clips from White Ribbon and a few other things. And it was, yes, instantly very interesting. We both remembered, re-remembered White Ribbon.
And Christian has this sort of, um, quiet, um, affectionate quality. And that was instantly very interesting. Clearly, what we were doing is something that, refuted the sort of tropes of monstrous, villainous Nazis. You know, we, everything, I hope, I hope it's a given that, you know, everything about this film is we were trying to, um, look for the similarities rather than the differences.
And look, and sort of try and refute that kind of comfortable demonisation of like, um, ironically, sort of othering Nazis, dehumanizing Nazis.
So we were looking for something different from that.
And yes, he did put himself on tape. But it was on the basis of us having really explored him with our casting director, maybe he didn't know that. And then he came to London and, uh, John and I met him in a pub in, um, in Westbourne Grove.
And we had a very, uh, general chat. He still didn't know. Uh, what it was all about, but we told him, uh, then, because John likes to sort of see the person and, you know, and it's kind of open a way without them, trying to sort of perform, uh, the role. And yeah, that's how it began with Christian.
And with, with Christian, the process was different in the sense of he was instantly on board and wanting to do it.
Alex: You touched on it just then, in terms of the approach to how this was going to be shot, and taking a different approach to perhaps conventional cinema that has taken the subject matter on before. I think before we get on to that, it is just worth discussing exactly where this film was shot because I know you initially wanted to shoot in the house that the Höss family had lived in, but that wasn't possible, but you did find a derelict house about 200 meters away from the site of the camp, and you turned that into an almost exact replica of the Höss household, even down to knowing the right age of the trees in the garden that you reconstructed.
As a producer, just talk me through if you've ever had an undertaking like that to do before, and what that process was like for you.
Jim Wilson: No, absolutely never had to, uh, do something like that in another film and that was, one of the massive, uh, production challenges, which was certainly, I think probably a number of challenges that were more challenging than anything I'd experienced, I've experienced on any other films.
There was actually, in fact, what we've been talking about, there was the long challenge of what it is we're, we're doing. What story to tell? And then it was moving into, okay, now we're making it. And the next big challenge that presented was exactly that where to do it.
We knew we were doing it in Poland, as you say, we rightly say, we, after many times visiting the real house, we thought about doing it in the real house. It didn't make, it didn't make sense because the real house was too changed, 80 years on. We wanted to make it where it happened, Jon really strongly felt that would produce a powerful effect, a sort of primal one that would, you you know, of just, of being there for everyone, people in front of the camera and behind the camera.
And yes, we found this, uh, there was this, um, derelict house, a couple of hundred metres away from the real Höss house. Also adjacent to Auschwitz, uh, looking at the walls of Auschwitz, from a similar perspective, but it was set in just, uh, a field, uh, there was no garden, there was nothing, and so we set about, getting this house, it was obviously owned, so we made a deal with the owner of the, uh, of the derelict house who had it as a property that they were a family that were gonna, reconstruct it, and we, rented it for a period, and, uh, and, uh, Chris Oddy, Jon's amazing, production designer who did Under the Skin and who works with Jon on everything, he set about turning this, uh, derelict house into the Höss house that you see in the, in the film.
And then, crucially, and this, this was the, I mean it was pretty miraculous for me to witness and exciting, grow, this garden. We built the camp walls over the other side of which are Auschwitz, but on this side of the garden, the concrete walls with the, uh, palisades and the barbed wire, we built that going round it in, in the shape of their garden.
And then Chris and his team cultivated and grew that garden, laid turf, grew flowers. Brought in trees, saplings, at the correct ages, they would've been built, the greenhouse built the pagoda, the, the, the stepping stone path that the wheelbarrow goes round. There are beehives. We had real beehives with real bees, um, to pollinate the garden. He did that, I think, in four to five months. He wanted more, but the exigencies of how films get made, and he was really up against it. But yeah, over five months, he turned this sort of patch of scrubby grassland into that garden.
Dug the swimming pool, the slide, it was all based on reproducing, a sort of handful of photographs that exist. There's about half a, there's about a dozen photographs of the, uh, of the Höss Garden that we, uh, had. And then he also, in the archives, he found all these, all sorts of plans and architectural plans that allowed him to kind of work out what the perspectives are.
The house itself was much changed. He added the porch, the back terrace, kind of raised the roof, built the picket fence around it. Yeah it was an extraordinary feat into which we then put, and this was outside of the realm of art department, this sort of multi-camera system, of 10 cameras that allowed us to, retreat as a film crew and actors and the Christian and Sandra and the, and the kids to sort of be in this house and garden with us, withdrawn in a container on the other side of the wall.
And, uh, and play, like, um you know, Jon's used this phrase, you know, Big Brother in the Nazi house, but, yes, it was, it was an extraordinary production challenge in it. I couldn't have done it, we hadn't met, I have a producer partner on the film who's Polish, Ewa Puszczyńska, who, who made Cold War and Ida, Paweł Pawlikowski’s film and obviously, you know, working with a full Polish production team.
Couldn't have done it without them, virtually everything you see in that summer section of the film is, uh, is built by us, yeah.
Alex: When it comes to releasing a film like The Zone of Interest and because Jonathan is such a singular talent, you often hear in this day and age about movies, um, having test screenings in front of audiences and then being edited or changed in some way.
Based on what those test audiences have said, scores they've given, and so forth. Is that something that happened with a film like The Zone of Interest?
Jim Wilson: No, we didn't do any test screenings. I'm not just saying it to sort of toe a political line, but we, we did have fantastic, partners behind us making the film, Film4, Access, A24, and, um, no, we didn't do any test screening.
We haven't even touched on post production, sound and editing and the multi camera and mould and the thermal imaging camera, you know, all sorts of things, all these elements to, to mould into and, uh, and Mica’s music and Johnny Byrne's extraordinary sound design, which was like another film, right? Like almost this film that you hearsSeparate to the film you see, and you know, we were, post production was almost two years. Um, even continuing after the premiere in Cannes. That's how Jon works. And so, it's so involved and so rigorous and so changing and so organic. .
You couldn't put us through a more grilling testing system than is our own one, you know, and we screen it, you know, lots and lots and lots and to ourselves and inviting friends and family and stuff. But no, we didn't, we didn't test it and sit down with scorecards and stuff like that.
Alex: You used an interesting phrase earlier about creating quite a primal feeling both for your cast and for the crew.
Just talk me through what the experience of being on that set and so close to the site of Auschwitz was like. I can only imagine, although I don't know, that this was a set that had an atmosphere like no other set that you've been on
Jim Wilson: Was interesting, I think it was probably You know, we were there a long time, certainly Jon and I and Chris Oddie and the key collaborators, you know, we were going back and forth for many years, so we were, we did habituate ourselves to being there, so at some level you do get used to it, um, you know, when you go there, of course, every, probably pretty much everyone who worked on the film, actors or crew, may, would go and visit, the tours of Auschwitz.
They're obviously extremely powerful to experience. I think the thing that hit everyone in, in a strong way, was that proximity that I mentioned that you picked up on, is when you go to that real house, that domestic house, and you see the, the wall, and you see the, the garden path, and yeah, you know, the walk from the real house to his office building is about, yeah, it's about 90 seconds, Alex.
It's like, he really, he really did decide to live like, almost like a, like a park keeper, you know, by the park, or the school caretaker who decides to live on the school ground so they can be close to work. And you think about the noise and the smell and the, and the raising of the family. That was the thing that just reinforced the idea in a, in a kind of primal way, and at the same time, it's a personal reaction, because in some ways you do get used to being there, it's a bustling provincial town, and for the people who live there, it's like, well, there was an, there was this town here before, those ghastly years, and there is, now there is a town, and we live it, and we're not just marked by that.
But at the same time, the land and the place that is marked by that, part of the process of building it that you asked about earlier was quite complicated because there are all sorts of laws about because you're on a site where there's human remains in the ground, you know, a million people were murdered, and many more, you know, maimed and tortured and enslaved, uh, on this place, so you can't help but feel the kind of, the ghosts of, of that. And at the same time, the reason, I think, underscoring why we were making the film was just to not say that this is like a mythic, mystical place, and this is a film that is trying to be about the present tense. And that's why we're trying to make it in this really modern way with 21st century technology.
Not like a, a sort of nostalgic period film about this event that happened far off. And that this, um, compartmentalisation that you see in the film with the, the wall is about, is, you know, we're trying to sort of see a glimpse of ourselves in that, you know, that it's a sort of uncomfortable mirror.
And so, it should kind of be about everywhere, and any place, and any time, that kind of goes beyond just the singularity of the place of Auschwitz. Yes, there's this sort of these ghosts and in the soil and the place, but also sort of Auschwitz is everywhere.
It's around us right now in terms of our indifference to, death and systematic violence and occupations and oppression that we're, we're sort of distanced from and how we, how we function while that's happening on the other side of the wall.
Alex: I'm aware we're almost out of time, so just to end, I've got few big quick fire questions. First of all, what was your favourite day on the set of your film?
Jim Wilson: I think my favourite day on the set of the film, was the, the last time we shot, And the last scene we shot was, um, things we felt it needed from editing it, was, uh, the scene of Rudolf, uh, saying goodbye to his horse in the stables.
[FILM SOUND BITE]
And the reason I choose that is because in having wrapped, having done the final wrap, we all gathered together, it was, it was I'm sort of, you know, peeking behind the curtain, but that was done in winter, a freezing Polish winter, even though that section of the film is the summer.
So we were very cold, and, uh, John said some words about what we'd all gathered to do, which was now we'd, we'd all been together for, you know, it was probably the 57th day of shooting, spread out, and it was very emotional, and he spoke about the ideas in the film and the violence, that is within us that we were trying to, talk about and get beyond and it was just a really emotional moment and him and Christian held each other and, uh, yeah, we all cried and, um, in this freezing, uh, bivouac, uh, with horizontal snow belting from the outside.
So I think it was just a moving, uh, moment of closure so that was my favourite moment.
Alex: What would you say is the toughest part of a producer's job?
Jim Wilson: I would say the toughest part of a producer's job is having the, uh, persistence and patience to stay the course and endure the long journey of, of a film. Uh, unless other people are doing it more efficiently than I, and it doesn't have to be as long. But, um, but to, to, to try and do it as best as you can, it's that, it's that carrying on from the point of inception, all the way through that development line. I mean, Zone is a good example because of how long it took. All the way through, okay, now we've got the script that we have to make into a film, you know, now find the money to do it, the shooting, and the, uh, post production, and now this part, and to kind of stay the course through that, and stay engaged, and stay, like rigorous.
Um, and I would say that's the hardest part of it.
Alex: Jim, again, congratulations on the film being recognised and thank you very much for your time.
Jim Wilson: Thanks, Alex. Thank you.
Alex: Many thanks to James Wilson and thank you for listening. Follow the podcast to explore the rest of the nominees and much more in the months to come. Discover the full longlist at BAFTA.org. Thanks to the producers of this series, Matt Hill and Ollie Piet at Rethink Audio with Sound design by Peregrine “Pez” Andrews. I'm Alex Zane.
This was a BAFTA production. I'll see you again as the countdown to the EE BAFTA Film Awards 2024 continues.
