Jewish Director Jonathan Glazer Calls To End Israeli War In Gaza During His Oscar Speech (X image@ rawratsym)
Jonathan Glazer, the director The Zone of Interest, received one of the greatest cheers during the Academy Awards for his acceptance speech during the ceremony. The filmmaker addressed Israel’s war on Gaza, while receiving award for his Holocaust drama, The Zone of Interest.
The Jewish filmmaker said, “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 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack in Gaza”.
The German-language, Polish-shot adaptation of Martin Ames novel has won award for the Best International Feature film. It is for the first time Britain has won the prize.
Glazer shared the stage with producer James Wilson, who has made a series of speeches voicing cautions against selective empathy. Glazer said when they were making the film, they had been eager to show not what has been done in the past, but where the dehumanisation has reached now.
He said, “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”.
Glazer dedicated his movie to the memory of a Polish woman named Alexandria, who worked for the Polish resistance when she was only 12 years old. She recalled how she had cycled to the Auschwitz camp with apples, and how she across a mysterious piece of music, which it turned out, had been composed by Auschwitz prisoner called Thomas Wolf, who survived the war.
Everything from the house, to the clothes and cycle used in Glazer’s film was originally belonged to the woman, who died few days after the filmmaker met with her. “It was her bike we used, and the dress the actor wears was her dress. Sadly, she died a few weeks after we spoke”.
