At last night’s Oscars, director Jonathan Glazer took home the award for Best International Feature Film for The Zone of Interest. During his acceptance speech, he made sure audiences connected the film to the atrocities happening in Gaza right now.
The Zone of Interest tells the story of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. While Jews and other prisoners are murdered, Höss and his family lead a peaceful, idyllic life on the other side of the wall separating their home from the camp. The film is a disturbing examination of how dehumanization and apathy can lead to unthinkable horrors.
Glazer has connected The Zone of Interest to Gaza before, although he hasn’t always been explicit about it. When he received the Oscar nomination in January, Glazer told Entertainment Weekly that the movie “is trying to ask questions about modern humanity and empathy. Whether there are people over our wall now, as a group, whose safety or freedom we care about less than our own.”
Last night, though, he hammered the point home. “Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst,” Glazer said, holding the Oscar alongside producers Leonard Blavatnik and James Wilson. “It’s shaped all of our past and present. 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 the 7th in Israel, or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all are victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist?”
1,200 Israelis and over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas’s attack on October 7, with the Israeli government still carrying out what many in the international community fear is an act of genocide against Gazans.
Predictably, there has been backlash and misinformation aimed at Glazer. Anti-Defamation League director emeritus Abraham Foxman, for example, accused Glazer of refuting his Jewishness, even though in context, Glazer’s statement is clearly refuting the use of Jewishness and the Holocaust to justify occupation and war.
Glazer wasn’t the only Oscar attendee calling for an end to the violence. Mark Ruffalo, Billie Eilish, and other stars wore red Artists4Ceasefire pins to signal their support for a ceasefire.
At the end of his speech, Glazer dedicated his award to Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, a Polish woman who inspired the character of the glowing girl in The Zone of Interest, who hides apples for newly arrived Auschwitz prisoners. Perhaps we can all learn from Aleksandra’s example: when violence feeds on dehumanization, it’s never too late to seek out humanity.
(Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
