01
The Zone of Interest
Why this pick
Like Son of Saul, it makes atrocity palpable through precisely controlled sound and framing, refusing spectacle while exposing the routine machinery surrounding mass murder.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE2015 1h 47m HUN
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Son of Saul
DramaThriller
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Son of Saul, try these.
01
02
The Ascent
Why this pick
A severe, immersive wartime ordeal whose close attention to faces, physical suffering, and impossible moral choices echoes Nemes’s spiritual intensity.
03
Come and See
Why this pick
Its subjective camera and devastating sensory design place you inside a young man’s disintegrating experience of Nazi violence, with similarly unflinching moral force.
04
The Grey Zone
Why this pick
Also set among Auschwitz Sonderkommando prisoners, it confronts survival, revolt, and compromised choices with a harsh, unsentimental intensity.
05
The Painted Bird
Why this pick
Its stark monochrome imagery and episodic descent through wartime brutality share Son of Saul’s refusal to soften historical horror or offer easy consolation.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
In October 1944, Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig) works as a ''Sonderkommando'' Hungarian-Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz concentration camp. His job is to salvage valuables from the clothing of the dead, drag bodies from the gas chambers and scrub the chambers before the next group arrives to be gassed. He works stoically, seemingly having been numbed by the daily horrors. One day following the gassing, he finds a boy who survived the gas, but is unconscious. From a distance, Saul witnesses a Nazi physician check vital signs, then methodically suffocates the boy and calls for an autopsy. Saul steps forth and insists on carrying the body himself to the prison doctor, Miklós (Sándor Zsótér), a fellow Hungarian prisoner and a forced assistant to Josef Mengele. He asks Miklós to not perform the autopsy so he can give the boy a proper Jewish burial. Miklós declines his plea, but allows him time alone with the boy before the autopsy and subsequent cremation. Saul returns later and steals the boys body and goes in search of a Rabbi to perform the ritual. He goes to Rabbi Frankel () in the crematorium, who dismisses Saul's concern and suggests that Saul perform the burial himself.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Levente Molnár
Abraham
Urs Rechn
Biedermann
Marcin Czarnik
Feigenbaum
Amitai Kedar
Hirsch
Géza Röhrig
Saul Auslander