British director Jonathan Glazer lands top Oscar nods for The Zone Of Interest
The London-born screenwriter picked up nominations in the best director and adapted screenplay categories for the film.
British-directed historical drama The Zone Of Interest has held its own among international blockbusters to notch up five Oscar nominations.
London-born screenwriter Jonathan Glazer picked up nods in the best director and adapted screenplay categories for the film, which follows a German family who live next to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.
It also received a nomination for the coveted best motion picture award alongside global hits including Oppenheimer, Barbie and Killers Of The Flower Moon.
The German-language film, which was inspired by Martin Amis’s 2014 book of the same name, also received nods in the sound and international feature film categories.
It stars German actor Christian Friedel as Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss, while Sandra Huller plays his wife Hedwig.
The drama sees the couple try to build a dream life for their five children in a house and garden next to the camp.
Hoss was a long-serving Nazi officer who was widely acknowledged as one of the architects of mass extermination during the Holocaust.
Reflecting on the film, Glazer said: “I started reading about Rudolf Hoss and his wife Hedwig and how they lived at Auschwitz, right on the corner of the plot, as it were.
“It became about the wall for me on some level, really. The compartmentalisation of their lives, and the horror that they lived next door.”
In the best director category, film-maker Glazer will go up against fellow Briton Christopher Nolan, who has been nominated for Oppenheimer, the epic biopic about atomic bomb creator J Robert Oppenheimer.
They also face competition from French director Justine Triet for courtroom drama Anatomy Of A Fall, veteran director Martin Scorsese for western crime thriller Killers Of The Flower Moon, and Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos for gothic fairytale comedy Poor Things.
The Zone Of Interest was distributed by A24, the company behind award-winning films including Everything Everywhere All At Once, Lady Bird and Moonlight.
The film premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in May to critical acclaim, with Glazer winning the Grand Prix and Fipresci Prize.
The Academy Awards ceremony will air from midnight on March 11 in the UK.
