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The director of the 2015 Oscar award-winning film Son of Saul, László Nemes, has become the latest Hollywood figure to weigh in on the speech given by The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer at the Academy Awards last week.
While accepting the award last week for best international film, Glazer delivered a set of pre-written remarks in which he compared his Holocaust film to the current conflict in Gaza. He was accompanied on stage by producer James Wilson and executive producer Len Blavatnik.
Jonathan Glazer accepts the award for The Zone of Interest for best international feature film during the 2024 Oscars.Credit: AP
“Our film shows where dehumanisation leads, at its worst,” he said. “It shaped all of our past and present. 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 on Gaza — all the victims of this dehumanisation, how do we resist?”
The Zone of Interest is based on the 2014 Martin Amis novel of the same title. It stars Christian Friedel as Nazi officer Rudolf Höss, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and Sandra Hüller as his wife Hedwig.
Glazer and Wilson have been explicit that their film, while telling a specific story about the Holocaust, was intended to encourage audiences to think about current events.
“All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present — not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now’,” Glazer said in his acceptance speech.
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Hungarian director Nemes, who – like Glazer – won the best international Oscar for a film about the Holocaust set in Auschwitz, said he feared the speech would stoke further antisemitism, saying Glazer “should have stayed silent instead of revealing he has no understanding of history and the forces undoing civilisation, before or after the Holocaust.”
“Had he embraced the responsibility that comes with a film like that, he would not have resorted to talking points disseminated by propaganda meant to eradicate, at the end, all Jewish presence from the Earth.”