'The Zone of Interest' wins Oscar award for best international film

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The harrowing Holocaust drama “ The Zone of Interest,” which explores questions of complicity while depicting the mundane lives of a Nazi family in their home adjacent to the Auschwitz death camp, won the Academy Award for best international film.

Writer-director Jonathan Glazer “has found a way to convey evil without ever depicting the horror itself,” wrote The Associated Press’ Jocelyn Noveck in her review. “But though it escapes our eyes, the horror assaults our senses in other, deeper ways.”

Sandra Hüller, nominated for best actress for “Anatomy of a Fall,” plays Hedwig, the wife of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the bloodthirsty commandant of Auschwitz. The film was the United Kingdom's submission to the Oscars.

In the film, the couple and their children go about their daily routines — living in a home just on the other side of a stone wall from the gas chambers. Höss spends his work days overseeing the “processing” of trainloads of people, most sent directly to their deaths. Then he comes home, where he and Hedwig share meals, celebrate birthdays, read their kids bedtime stories and make vacation plans.