One of the year’s most acclaimed, if unlikely films, “The Zone of Interest” is a Holocaust drama minus any Jewish victims.

Instead it’s a historical recreation of one of Nazi Germany’s nastiest figures: Rudolf Höss, the commandant in charge of Auschwitz, the concentration camp in Poland where millions of Jews were murdered. Hoss was hung in 1947 for war crimes.

“Zone” looks at Höss’s bountiful life in a large house complete with picturesque garden and swimming pool where only a wall separated his homelife from the crematorium and gas chambers that were in continuous operation on the other side.

The Los Angeles Film Critics voted “Zone” the year’s Best Picture. Similarly nominated for Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, it’s an expected Oscar nominee.

“We’d been talking about the subject of the Holocaust,” said producer James Wilson. “But it was always how to address the subject that was different than what was portrayed before — this perspective of a concentration camp from the point of view of the commandant and his family and his work world.

“That was interesting from the way traditionally Holocaust is narrated in the culture, which is story of its victims, its horror and the triumph of human spirit. This was the doorway to the rest of it.”

“That was almost 10 years ago,” said England’s Jonathan Glazer, the writer-director in a joint virtual interview. He wanted a film that spoke to today’s audience.

“That’s the reason we made it. The fact the film is set in 1943, the idea was, How can we tell this as if it is present tense? How can we speak to today? How can we make a film that talks about the human capacity for violence we have as a species?

“Also, the familiarity of these people: Normal people who became step by step mass murderers, who didn’t see their crimes as crimes.

“Everything about the film had to serve that 21st century lens.”

Casting was an issue. Both German actors Christian Friedel who plays Höss and Sandra Hüller, his wife Hedwig, were, Glazer said, “reluctant to get involved. That was probably because they’d been asked many times before to portray Nazis. Both, rightly so, had antipathy towards that.

“Once I explained how I was going to do the film, the point of the film, there was no fetishization, it was quite the opposite. We shared the same doubts going into the picture. That was true of the crew as well.”

While the actual Höss house still stands, crumbling, the film constructed an elaborate reconstruction a short distance away. “We were there next to Auschwitz,” Glazer, 58, said, “and a power and focus came with that proximity.”

“The Zone of Interest” opens Thursday