Jonathan Glazer faces backlash for Oscar speech

During his acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer spoke out against the ongoing attacks on Gaza.

Based on a 2014 novel by Martis Amis, The Zone of Interest is a harrowing depiction of life in Auschwitz during the Holocaust, told from the perspective of a family of Nazis – their idyllic domestic life juxtaposed against the horrors unfolding out of frame. 

Along with producer James Wilson, Glazer took the stage to accept the Oscar for Best International Picture (presented by the unlikely duo of Bad Bunny and Dwayne Johnson), and became the first ever British director to win the prize. During his speech, Glazer explained that he intended his film to have a contemporary resonance. “All our choices are made to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’ rather ‘Look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanisation leads at its worst. It’s shaped all of our past and present,” he says.

Speaking as a Jewish man, Glazer continued: “Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack in Gaza. All the victims of this dehumanisation – how do we resist?”

He ended his speech by paying tribute to an elderly Polish woman called Alexandria who he met during the production, who was involved in the Polish resistance when she was 12 years old. In the film, parts of her childhood are recreated, with scenes of her cycling to camp to leave apples for prisoners. “I dedicate this film to her memory, and to her resistance,” Glazer said, finally. Watch the speech in full below.

UPDATE (March 20, 2024): According to reports, over 900 Hollywood figures – including actors, executives, directors and producers – have signed an open letter condemning Glazer’s acceptance speech. The letter, shared this week, accuses the director of fuelling “a growing anti-Jewish hatred around the world”, and claims he was drawing a “moral equivalence” between the “Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination”. Signees include Amy Pascal, Julianna Margulies, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Eli Roth, among others – although doubts have been raised about the list’s integrity, as anyone is currently able to sign (one name is reportedly just listed as ‘Fromriver Tothesea‘).

The letter also took issue with Glazer’s use of the word “occupation”, noting that the word was being used to describe “an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years”. Whether or not Israel is occupying Gaza has been disputed: although settlers and ground troops were officially withdrawn in 2005, the Strip has been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007, and is currently facing a catastrophic famine due to their curbs on aid – which is why organisations like Amnesty and the UN still refer to it as an “occupied territory”.

Despite this backlash, Glazer has also received an outpouring of support, with the Auschwitz Memorial issuing a statement defending his speech. “Glazer issued a universal moral warning against dehumanisation,” they said. “His aim was not to descend to the level of political discourse. Critics who expected a clear political stance or a film solely about genocide did not grasp the depth of his message.”

Jewish author and journalist Naomi Klein has also expressed her support for Glazer in a piece for The Guardian: “Everyone I know who has seen the film can think of little but Gaza,” she wrote. “No two genocides are identical... [but] some of the patterns – the wall, the ghetto, the mass killing, the repeatedly stated eliminationist intent, the mass starvation, the pillaging, the joyful dehumanisation, and the deliberate humiliation – are repeating.”

To counteract the letter, defenders of Glazer have also shared a petition in support of the director. At the time of writing, it has 900 signees.