More than 500 additional Hollywood figures signed the letter overnight condemning Jonathan Glazer‘s Oscars 2024 speech for his best international film win for The Zone of Interest.
The letter, which was published yesterday with 450 signees already attached, denounced the director’s speech, mimicking his own phrasing at the awards show on March 10. The signatories include actors, executives, directors, creators, producers and representatives.
“We refute our Jewishness being hijacked for the purpose of drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination,” the letter began.
In his acceptance speech, Glazer noted that he made The Zone of Interest in an effort to show “where dehumanization leads at its worst” and how it shapes the past and present.
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.” Adding, “Whether the victims of Oct. 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”
Since the Oscars, the director’s speech has received lots of pushback, with many people taking the quote out of context and only using the part in which he says he and his fellow filmmakers were men refuting their Jewishness.
People who worked on the film have also come forward to share their disagreement with the speech, including its financier Danny Cohen. Zone of Interest producer Len Blavatnik, who was onstage with Glazer at the awards show, shared a statement through a representative that the director had not run the speech by him before giving it, despite speaking on behalf of those accepting the award.
More to come…
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