‘The Zone of Interest’ executive producer condemns Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars speech
The Zone of Interest executive producer Danny Cohen has condemned director Jonathan Glazer‘s speech at the Academy Awards on March 10th, that addressed the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.
In light of current conflict in the Middle East which continues to rage on, Glazer used his speech to compare the situation with the “dehumanisation” that occurred at the Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II, which serves as the backdrop in The Zone of Interest.
Glazer told the crowd at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles: “Our film shows where dehumanisation leads at its worst, 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 that has led to conflict for so many innocent people.”
The British director continued: “Whether the victims of October 7th or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all of the victims of this dehumanisation, how do we resist?”
Now, Cohen, who previously served as the director of the BBC before serving as an executive producer on The Zone of Interest, has criticised Glazer for his remarks.
On the Unholy podcast, Cohen said: “It’s really important to recognise it’s upset a lot of people and a lot of people feel upset and angry about it. And I understand that anger frankly.”
Like Glazer, Cohen is Jewish and claimed “a lot” of people from the community who felt frustrated that the message of The Zone of Interest had become “mixed up with what’s going on now [in Gaza], whether that was Jonathan’s intention or not to do that.”
Further distancing himself from Glazer’s speech, Cohen said: “I just fundamentally disagree with Jonathan on this. The war and the continuation of the war is the responsibility of Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organisation which continues to hold and abuse the hostages, which doesn’t use its tunnels to protect the innocent civilians of Gaza but uses it to hide themselves and allow Palestinians to die.”
The executive concluded: “I think the war is tragic and awful and the loss of civilian life is awful, but I blame Hamas for that.”
Glazer’s speech has also been scrutinised by The Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA. David Schaecter, the president of the organisation, said in an open letter: “I watched in anguish Sunday night when I heard you use the platform of the Oscars ceremony [to] equate Hamas’s maniacal brutality against innocent Israelis with Israel’s difficult but necessary self-defense in the face of Hamas’s ongoing barbarity.”
Schaecter added: “Your comments were factually inaccurate and morally indefensible. The ‘occupation’ of which you speak has nothing [to] do with the Holocaust.”
Glazer is yet to comment on the criticism regarding his speech.
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