#lukasz zal

[rotblut]

The Zone of Interest (2023) dir. Jonathan Glazer

[sesiondemadrugada]

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023).

[filmaticbby]

The Zone of Interest (2023)

dir. Jonathan Glazer

[lookforastronauts]

#105. Loving Vincent (2017)

dir. Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman dop. Tristan Oliver, Lukasz Zal

[davidhudson]

Happy 66th, Paweł Pawlikowski.

With cinematographer Łukasz Żal during the making of Cold War (2018).

[cristalconnors]

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Shortlisted: About Dry Grasses / All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt / De Humani Corporis Fabrica / Queens of the Qing Dynasty / Stonewalling / The Taste of Things

THE NOMINEES ARE:

ALL OF US STRANGERS

Cinematography by Jamie D. Ramsay

GODLAND

Cinematography by Maria von Hausswolff

JOYLAND

Cinematography by Joe Saade

THE ZONE OF INTEREST

Cinematography by Łukasz Żal

AND THE CRISTAL GOES TO...

PACIFICTION

Cinematography by Artur Tort

[floorman3]

The Zone of Interest Review- A Mix Between Pleasantville and Downfall Doesn't Do This Masterpiece Justice

I’ve seen a lot of films about World War II but rarely have they shown the stark reality of what life was truly like for members of the SS. The Zone of Interest is the first film about the Nazis since Downfall that I have felt the true nature of who these people were. This is a look at the systematic destruction of a group of people while the people doing it are living what seems like the perfect…

[genevieveetguy]

The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer (2023)

[awardseasonblog]

(via TIFF 48: a Łukasz Žal il Variety Artisan Award)

[happyheidi]

Loving Vincent (Hugh Welchman and Dorota Kobiela, 2017)

Cinematography by Lukasz Zal and Tristan Oliver.

[byneddiedingo]

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)

Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Johann Karthaus, Luis Noah Witte, Nele Ahrenmeier, Lili Falk, Medusa Knopf, Maximilian Beck, Andrey Isaev, Stephanie Petrowitz, Imogen Kogga. Screenplay: Jonathan Glazer, based on a novel by Martin Amis. Cinematography: Lukasz Zal. Production design: Chris Oddy. Film editing: Paul Watts. Music: Mica Levi. 

[denimbex1986]

'...Close Your Eyes led the nominations alongside Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers with 10 apiece. Strangers ended up the biggest winner of the day with four: Lead Actor Andrew Scott as a gay man finally coming to terms with his painful repression; Supporting Actor Jamie Bell as the ghostly, apologetic dad who failed to save him from bullying; the film’s entire otherworldly Ensemble, including strong turns from Claire Foy and Paul Mescal; and writer-director Andrew Haigh for his lovingly crafted Adapted Screenplay based on a novel by Taichi Yamada...

BEST PICTURE

1. Close Your Eyes 2. All of Us Strangers...

BEST DIRECTOR • Lila Avilés – Tótem • Victor Erice – Close Your Eyes – WINNER • Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest • Andrew Haigh – All of Us Strangers • Radu Jude – Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World – Runner-up • Justine Triet – Anatomy of a Fall – Runner-up

LEAD ACTOR • Paul Giamatti – The Holdovers • Karim Leklou – Sons of Ramses • Josh O’Connor – La Chimera • Andrew Scott – All of Us Strangers – WINNER • Manolo Solo – Close Your Eyes – Runner-up • Koji Yakusho – Perfect Days

SUPPORTING ACTOR • Jamie Bell – All of Us Strangers – WINNER • José Coronado – Close Your Eyes – Runner-up • Mateo Garcia – Tótem • Milo Machado Graner – Anatomy of a Fall • Charles Melton – May December • Ben Whishaw – Passages

SUPPORTING ACTRESS • Claire Foy – All of Us Strangers • Julianne Moore – May December • Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers • Catalina Saavedra – Rotting in the Sun • Ana Torrent – Close Your Eyes – Runner-up • Ana Torrent – Foremost by Night – WINNER

ENSEMBLE • All of Us Strangers – WINNER • Anatomy of a Fall • Asteroid City • Close Your Eyes • Society of the Snow • Tótem – Runner-up

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY • All of Us Strangers – Andrew Haigh – WINNER • The Beast in the Jungle – Patric Chiha, Jihane Chouaib, Axelle Ropert • Killers of the Flower Moon – Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese • Poor Things – Tony McNamara • Society of the Snow – J.A. Bayona, Jaime Marques, Bernat Vilaplana, Nicolás Casariego • The Zone of Interest – Jonathan Glazer – Runner-up

CINEMATOGRAPHY • All of Us Strangers – Jamie Ramsay • Close Your Eyes – Valentín Álvarez • Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell – Dinh Duy Hung – runner-up • La Chimera – Hélène Louvart • Samsara – Mauro Herce, Jessica Sarah Rinland – WINNER • The Zone of Interest – Lukasz Zal

EDITING • All of Us Strangers – Jonathan Alberts • Anatomy of a Fall – Laurent Sénéchal – WINNER • Close Your Eyes – Ascen Marchena • Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World – Catalin Cristutiu – Runner-up • Oppenheimer – Jennifer Lame • Society of the Snow – Andrés Gil, Jaume Martí

SOUND DESIGN • All of Us Strangers – Joakim Sundström • The Boy and the Heron – Koji Kasamatsu • Maestro – Richard King, Steve Morrow, Tom Ozanich, Jason Ruder, Dean Zupancic • Oppenheimer – Richard King, Kevin O’Connell, Gary A. Rizzo, Willie Burton • Samsara – Xabier Erkizia, Luca Rulio – WINNER • The Zone of Interest – Johnnie Burn, Tarn Willers – Runner-up...'

[sesiondemadrugada]

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023).

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

Loving Vincent (2018) was photographed by Tristan Oliver and Lukasz Zal. Tristan was born in Kent, England, and has 24 cinematography credits from a 1986 short to 2023.

Tristan's other notable credits include a 1993 Wallace and Gromit short, a Spice Girls video, Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Fantastic Mr Fox, ParaNorman, and Isle of Dogs.

Luke was born in Koszalin, Poland, and has 21 cinematography credits from a 2005 short to 2023. His other notable credits include I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and The Zone of Interest. He is Oscar nominated for Ida and Cold War.

[glenngaylord]

Negative Space - Film Review: The Zone Of Interest ★★★★★

Whenever filmmaker Jonathan Glazer releases a new film, and he has only made four in the past 23 years, I sit up and take notice. Sexy Beast, Birth, and Under The Skin made lasting impressions, and his latest, The Zone Of Interest, has profoundly affected me more than any other film I’ve seen this year. Based on the 2014 novel by the same name from the late Martin Amis, it relates a Holocaust narrative strictly told from the point of view of a Nazi leader and his family who live just on the other side of the wall to Auschwitz.

That family consists of the real-life Commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, Anatomy Of A Fall) and their children, who live in a bucolic villa complete with a swimming pool, greenhouse and extensive garden. At the outset, we watch the Höss’ picnic and lead fairly quiet, normal lives. One could easily mistake this as a serene comedy of manners if not paying careful attention. The occasional offscreen gunshot or scream, however, belies the sun-dappled visuals. Look even closer and you’ll see the barbed wire, the guard towers, and in one indelible image, the smoke from a transport train making its way across the top of the frame as Höss stands proudly watching his brood frolic in the pool.

While we never witness the atrocities, the hellish soundscape provided by the incredible Composer Mica Levi and Sound Designer Johnnie Burn provides plenty of nightmarish context. Forget all the CGI blockbusters, THIS is the true masterclass in the use of sound. The horror at the center of this film is that of indifference, disassociation, and the “banality of evil”. Euphemisms such as "yield" to signify the number of the slaughtered, or the title, which blandly refers to the area outside the camps, allows all of us to somehow stomach the terrors at hand. This forced perspective proves unbearably agonizing.

Cinematographer Lukasz Zal (Ida, Cold War) contributes an endless series of carefully composed images, mostly wide shots and often static. The negative spaces he creates suggest the unimaginable just out of frame. We rarely get a close-up of the characters, instead we’re kept at a distance as they flatly go about their days. A scene of Höss meeting with engineers to review a more effective way to exterminate the Jews plays just as matter-of-factly as one of Hedwig gardening. When one of the children locks another in the greenhouse, one could easily find it amusing were it not for the fact that the older one makes gas chamber hissing sounds at his sibling.

Glazer takes a distancing, experimental approach to the material, somewhat as he did with Under The Skin, but the effect proves far more chilling here. He creates a rhythm with one seemingly mundane scene after another until you begin to realize that coat Hedwig tries on once belonged to a prisoner, or that her children are playing with teeth and not toys. Occasionally he interrupts the story with night vision scenes of a defiant young girl whose impact on the proceedings crystalizes later with an off-camera remark guaranteed to sap the film of any hope.

The performances for the most part seem functional and this feels clearly by design. Careful not to make the Nazis sympathetic, the actors’ flatness serves to make the audience complicit with their remove from the terrors unfolding steps away. We have room to reflect on who we have become or perhaps have always been, especially concerning the current state of things. We TikTok as the world burns. Martin Amis had previously explored a shift in historical perspective with his 1991 novel Time's Arrow, which also seemed to conclude that regardless of the point of view, cruelty and apathy persist. Amis and Glazer seem to say that Nazis don’t hold the copyright on disinterest or evil. Left unchecked and unexamined, we’re all capable of such behavior.

Despite this, both Friedel and especially Hüller create a pair of unforgettable characters. Friedel carries himself tightly as any military officer and establishes himself as a dull bureaucrat who loves his family and yet doesn’t hesitate to wield his power in horrific ways. The scariest moment in any film this year comes when he tells his wife how he feels about The Final Solution, and his last moment gives us a brief window into the bile churning up within. Hüller, for her part, proves even scarier as she clomps around the house in her heavy heels, quietly threatening one of her Jewish workers, and seething with entitled rage. At one point she laughingly, and without irony, tells her mother she’s known as the “Queen Of Aushchwitz”.

This year no other film made me ugly cry as much as All Of Us Strangers and no other film can hold a candle to the screenwriting craft and love for its characters as much as The Holdovers. The Zone Of Interest, however, despite feeling more like an art installation than a traditional movie, is a masterpiece which will stick with me forever.

[bl00db4th]

16. Loving Vincent (2017) dir. by Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman

The film brings the paintings of Vincent van Gogh to life to tell his remarkable story. Every one of the 65,000 frames of the film is an oil-painting hand-painted by 125 professional oil-painters who travelled from all across the world to the Loving Vincent studios in Poland and Greece to be a part of the production. As remarkable as Vincent’s brilliant paintings are his passionate and ill-fated life and mysterious death.

Cinematography Tristan Oliver & Lukasz Zal