A scene from “The Zone of Interest.” Photo: A24

The Zone of Interest, by British Jewish director Jonathan Glazer about the family of an SS officer who was the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, won the second place award, called the Grand Prix, at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on Saturday.

The movie, filmed in Poland and Germany, follows the story of real-life Nazi SS officer Rudolf Höss and his wife, Hedwig, as they build a family life for themselves in a lavish two-story villa and garden right next to the camp.

“In the stunning house surrounded by gardens, the commandant and his wife are busy relishing the prospect of a bright future built on wealth stolen from the victims of the Holocaust, as millions of Jews from across Europe are dying right on their doorstep,” according to a synopsis of the film provided by the Cannes Film Festival. “The zone of interest,” known as interessengebiet in German, was a designation used by the Nazis to describe the 40-square kilometer area immediately surrounding the Auschwitz concentration camp complex in Oświęcim, Poland.

The Zone of Interest is loosely based on a 2014 novel of the same name by the late British writer Martin Amis, who died right before the film’s world premiere at Cannes on May 19, where it received a six-minute standing ovation. Jim Wilson and Ewa Puszcyńska were lead producers and the movie stars Christian Friedel as Höss and Sandra Hüller his wife. The film’s screenplay was also by Glazer, who additionally directed 2014’s Under The Skin. The Zone of Interest is Glazer’s fourth feature film and his first time premiering a movie at the Cannes Film Festival. He researched the project for two years before writing the screenplay and had researchers working with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial.

“I didn’t want a story with the Holocaust as backdrop. There are so many books on this subject, and you can open randomly to any page of any of them and there’s a movie on every page,” said Glazer. “What I wanted to film was the contrast between somebody pouring a cup of coffee in their kitchen and somebody being murdered over on the other side of the wall. The co-existence of those two extremes. That would be the atmosphere, and how the audience would also experience it.”

The Zone of Interest also received the CST award for technical artist and a FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) award.

The film is a co-production between the US, United Kingdom and Poland. US producer and distributor A24 secured global distribution deals for Europe and Japan for the film and others deals have also been finalized to have the film distributed in Germany, Austria, France, Benelux, Spain, Italy, Scandinavia, Greece, Switzerland and Poland, according to The Hollywood Reporter.