Any filmmaker trying to draw meaning from the Holocaust onscreen faces potential pitfalls. Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” a dark horse candidate for best picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday, avoids all of these traps and finds something new and profoundly unsettling to say about the Holocaust. “Zone” is ostensibly about the genocide of European Jewry, but its focus is not on the Jewish victims, who remain almost entirely offscreen. Rather, Mr. Glazer exposes the perpetrators to the scrutiny of the audience’s gaze. “Zone” depicts the life of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his family at their handsome estate just outside the walls of the death camp.

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Persons: Agnieszka Holland’s, Roberto Benigni’s, you’re, Claude Lanzmann, ” Steven Spielberg’s, Jonathan Glazer’s, Spielberg, I’ve, Glazer, Rudolf Höss Locations: Auschwitz