THE ZONE OF INTEREST
NAZI PERPETRATORS IN CINEMA

This talk investigates The Zone of Interest (2023) and its representation of Auschwitz Kommandant Rudolph Hoess, his family and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Separating the film from the fallout from director Jonathan Glazer's controversial Oscar acceptance speech (in which he stressed the contemporary relevance of his film by drawing a parallel between the Holocaust and the conflict between Israel and Hamas), we will consider the film in the context of historic representations of Nazi perpetrators and of how cinema has addressed ethical dilemmas around dehumanisation and the so-called banality of evil. The talk argues that The Zone of Interest is innovative and thought-provoking, as much for what it refrains to show as much as for what it does.

Giacomo Lichtner Bio
Giacomo Lichtner is Associate Professor of History at Victoria University of Wellington and the deputy Chair of the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand. He teaches and researches the history, memory and representation of fascism and the Holocaust, with a particular interest in film as a privileged medium in the construction of popular ideas of the past. Giacomo is the author of Film and the Shoah in France and Italy (Vallentine Mitchell, 2008) and Fascism in Italian Cinema Since 1945: the Politics and Aesthetics of Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). He is currently writing for Bloomsbury a new book entitled The Search for Meaning in Holocaust Cinema.

We look forward to you attending this speaker talk.