The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall were two of the most celebrated foreign language films of 2023. Among many other international awards, the former won Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film and Best Sound, while the latter won Best Original Screenplay.

Both are serious, excellent dramas that are freshly cinematic in their approach and look. Both are examples of what great non-Hollywood films can be

The Zone of Interest is based on the true story of Rudolf Hüss, the SS officer and commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. But this isn’t your usual Holocaust story; it’s neither Schindler’s List nor Life is Beautiful, and not anything in between. It’s the story of a family trying to make life work with a busy household, an oft-times confusing war in the background, and pressure on the husband to become more efficient in his duties. The only difference here is that the family lives just outside of the walls of a concentration camp with the ever-present sounds of killing permanently in the background, and the husband’s duties include discovering more effective ways of killing Jews and disposing with their remnants. The “banality of evil” has perhaps never been as strongly presented as in this film.

The dramatic tension is not in the plot per se, which what plot there is can be distilled to the question of what is going to happen if we have to move (like Meet Me in St. Louis, but way darker). The dramatic tension is between what we are watching (a so-called “normal family” living the literal shadow of a death camp), what we believe about evil, and what we know of history. There is the slight undercurrent question of how much the family, and especially the wife, know of what is happening just yards from their yard. But (spoiler alert) then there is a devasting moment when we realize that she knows exactly what is going on, and it’s chilling.

For a film to win Best Sound over the incredible soundscape in Oppenheimer, and especially a foreign film, one has to believe that the use of sound is something altogether other, which it is. One could watch the film several times and would just be scratching the surface of what the sound is doing. It’s brilliant, and haunting. The film won nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Motion Picture, in addition to the two wins already noted; it could easily have garnered a Best Cinematography nomination as well. Its use of infrared photography just adds to the presence of ghosts that lie everywhere in the film. Just see it.

Anatomy of a Fall is the other great reminder from last year that foreign films, even those with subtitles—this film is in English, French, and German—are well worth the watch. In many ways, this is a courtroom drama in the same cinematic universe as 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder, after which it is named. Also nominated for five Oscars—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Actress, including its win in the Best Original Screenplay category, the film follows the case of a death from a fall—accident, suicide, or murder. Some feel that the film settles the issue, or at least suggests an explanation. In my mind, it’s more like the film Doubt, which kept the incidentals of an action—the did she/didn’t she?—in the background and swirl of questions and emotional responses in the foreground. Sandra Hüller, playing the wife, was instructed by the director to play her character is if she were innocent.

For those of us in the West who want to know for sure what happened in our TV shows and films, there is still so much that’s marvelous in the film that it’s worth spending its admittedly long 2.5 hours with it. Like its earlier namesake, the film has extraordinary performances. I am one who thinks that James Steward should have won his second Oscar for Anatomy of a Murder, and here, there are two—OK, three—performances worthy of an award.

Sandra Hüller, for those who weren’t familiar with her, is the cinematic thespian find of last year. These two performances alone should guarantee her a place in film history. It’s difficult to pay as close attention as the performance deserves in The Zone of Interest, in that the story is far broader than the story of the wife, and her stellar acting is simply of a piece with the other elements of a subtly powerful film. But in Anatomy of a Fall, Hüller is front and center, and the story is hers. And she owns every moment she’s in the frame, whether in the background cooking or yelling in frustration at her soon-to-be-dead husband. It’s easy to see why of her two great performances last year that this would be on the one Oscar-nominated. It’s full, rich, powerful, and enigmatic all at the same time.

The other great human performance is that of Milo Machado-Graner, who plays the couple’s 11-year-old son Daniel. Machado-Graner actually opens the film, but at a distance. That distance is slowly but steadily decreased until he is giving the dominant performance, and he is outstanding. Put this in your list of best child performances. Nothing I write here, though, is meant to take away from the solid work by Samuel Theis as the husband, and especially, Swann Arlaud as the lawyer.

Lastly, there has been a great deal of deserved talk over the “performance” of Messi as Snoop, the family dog. Messi has actually won several awards for his work here, my favorite being (not kidding) the Palm Dog Award at Cannes. He has his own seat at this year’s Oscar show, and if a dog can be said to give a real performance, this is the best you’ll ever see. At first, Snoop is simply the family pet in the background. But as with Daniel, he eventually becomes a major character, and every other dog performance will look phony after this.

These two films should be seen by anyone interest in modern European cinema, what sound can do, historical films, mysteries, courtroom dramas, and films with great acting, especially Hüller, and yes, even Messi. There are larger issues galore in both these films, issues of evil, self-delusion, human cruelty, the ups and downs of marital life, the question of how can come to know the truth of anything. But these issues lie gloriously under the surface in both these films, and enrich their films without suffocating them. Rare, indeed. But oh so artful.