Oscar-winning Jewish director of Holocaust film denounces 'occupation,' 'dehumanization'

At the Academy Awards ceremony in at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood for the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday night, Best Actor winner Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer dedicated his win “to all the peacekeepers” and Jonathan Glazer, the director of Holocaust film, "The Zone of Interest," made a somewhat disjointed speech about “dehumanization” during the Israel-Hamas war that referenced the October 7 massacre by Hamas. But most of the Academy winners and presenters stayed mum about the war, as they have since it began.

British Jewish director Jonathan Glazer’s German-language film, The Zone of Interest, about the family of the commandant of Auschwitz living on the death-camp grounds won the Best International Feature, and he used his acceptance speech to talk about the ongoing Hamas-Israel war, although what he said was hard to follow.

Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech for Best International Film for ‘THE ZONE OF INTEREST’ at the #Oscars pic.twitter.com/XNsMv0HDib

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After thanking the Academy, his cast and producers, and Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Glazer said read from a written statement, although he was clearly emotional, as he spoke about the war in sentence fragments, saying, “All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present, not to say that what they did then, rather than what we do now. Our film shows where dehumanization 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 which has led to conflict for so many for so many innocent people.”

At this point, Glazer was interrupted by applause, and after a pause he went on to say, “Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist?”

In sequences in the film, a mysterious girl is shown leaving food around the camp, and Glazer has said in interviews she was based on a Polish woman he met when she was in her 90s named Alexandra, who as a child did what she could to provide food for the Auschwitz inmates, and he said he was dedicating the award to her life and her memory.

Those who attended the ceremony had to pass a gauntlet of pro-Palestinian protesters who eyeballed each passing car according, to one guest, presumably looking for people wearing yellow-ribbon pins. These pins are meant remind people of the plight of the 134 hostages kidnapped in Israel by Hamas on October 7 and still held in Gaza, but this attendee said that no one felt safe wearing them on the way to the ceremony. “It was scary as hell,” said one attendee.

No one publicly mentioned the Israeli hostages

Some Academy Awards members wore red pins calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, among them Ramy Youssef, who is one of the stars of the movie, Poor Things, which was nominated for 11 Oscars, including Best Picture.

Youssef, a writer and producer as well as an actor, is best known for the series, "Ramy," about the son of Egyptian immigrants to the US. Interviewed on the red carpet, Youssef said, “This pin here is for Artists4Ceasefire, which has . . . . more than 400 signatories [to its open letter], just calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, in Palestine to really ensure the safety for innocent people. We really want to stop killing kids and we want to make sure everyone’s safe. It’s really just a humanitarian issue that a lot of artists have been really passionate about.”

He didn’t mention the hostages at all, including the baby, Kfir Bibas, and toddler, Ariel Bibas, still held by Hamas. When he presented the Oscar for Best Live-Action Short, he did not comment on the war, however.

Among other celebrities wearing the red pins were siblings Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell, whose song, “What Was I Made For?” from the movie, Barbie, won the Oscar for Best Song; Mark Ruffalo, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Poor Things; and Cord Jefferson, who won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction.

Steven Spielberg presented the Best Director Award to Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer, but did not make a statement about anything connected to the war. 

There may have been a couple of yellow ribbon pins in the audience, but they were not visible on anyone who appeared on stage or who was interviewed on the red carpet. And anyone who wore them at the ceremony likely took them off before facing the protesters outside the auditorium.