Announcing: the Leading Ladies Film Club!
And the first movie of the month for APRIL
This is the first installment of our new monthly series: The Leading Ladies Film Club!
What, exactly, does it mean to be a part of the film club?
Well, first — you subscribe to Leading Ladies.
Second, you watch the movie of the month.
And that pretty much sums it up (for now)!
But wait, there’s actually more. My friend
and I will record a podcast conversation about the Film Club movie of the month. This will be shared in a newsletter at the end of the month.As the Film Club develops, we want to make it participatory. We want you to join in! So we will be trying different methods for bringing you into the conversation, so that we can hear your thoughts and opinions about the movie, too.
With that said, I’m excited to announce our very first Leading Ladies Film Club Movie of the Month!
April: The Zone of Interest
This month, the Film Club is watching and talking about the 2023 Jonathan Glazer film The Zone of Interest.
This film generated a lot of buzz ever since it premiered at 76th Cannes Film Festival in May 2023. It was theatrically released in the US last December. It was nominated for five big Academy Awards including Best Picture, and won two — Best International Feature Film and Best Sound. And there’s good reason for that buzz.
The Zone of Interest is a completely unique film that conveys the terrors and evils of the Holocaust by depicting daily life right outside its walls, in the family of the Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss.
It’s been called a horror film, but the horror doesn’t come from jump scares or violent imagery. It comes from the sounds of everything we don’t see.
I don’t want to say too much more. I personally went into the film knowing too much. This reduced some of the shock of what I was viewing.
However, even knowing too much, this film stuck with me. It unsettled me, and left me with questions that I think are important to sit with.
Sarah Hüller plays Rudolf’s wife, Hedwig Höss. She’s the Leading Lady here (she was nominated for best actress this year, for her work in The Anatomy of a Fall). But The Zone of Interest is very different from most films we recommend here at Leading Ladies. In fact, it’s different from any film I’ve ever seen.
So it’s not exactly one that you’ll want to cozy up for with a bowl of popcorn and a group of friends. This is a somber movie that you might even want to watch as a matinee (which is what I did) so that you have some distance between it and trying to go to sleep. We also recommend you watch it on the biggest screen possible for maximal effect of what Jonathan Glazer is doing visually.
We recommend The Zone of Interest not because it’s our favorite thing to watch, but because we think it’s a film that people who like film should watch. It’s also a film that people who want to like and learn more about film should watch. And it’s a story that’s asking several important, eternal questions that we still need to ask ourselves today. What I’m really saying is: everyone should watch it.
During and after viewing, here are some things to think about, questions that Tory and I talked about in our conversation:
What question(s) is The Zone of Interest asking you to consider?
What answers, if any, does it give?
What do you make of the ending?
How do the visual and sound choices of the filmmaker inform how you read the film?
The Zone of Interest is currently available to rent on Prime Video. We encourage you to watch it this month. We’ll be sharing our conversation about it at the end of April, as well as giving you an opportunity to respond!
Thank you for reading and for being a part of the Leading Ladies Film Club!