László Nemes, the director of acclaimed Holocaust film Son of Saul, has spoken out against the speech made by the The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer, when he accepted his Oscar last weekend.
Glazer has ignited support but also a huge backlash with his speech, in which he said he and his producer James Wilson “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.”
Now Nemes, who won the foreign language award in 2015 for his film about the Holocaust, Son of Saul, writes in The Guardian newspaper:
“The Zone of Interest is an important movie… Its director 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.
“It is especially troubling in an age where we are reaching pre-Holocaust levels of anti-Jewish hatred – this time, in a trendy, ‘progressive’ way. Today, the only form of discrimination not only tolerated but also encouraged is antisemitism.”
Read the full statement by Nemes here
Son of Saul and The Zone of Interest both premiered at Cannes, eight years apart, where they each won the the grand prix (the runner-up’s prize) at the festival, and both are set at Auschwitz in 1944.
Danny Cohen, the film’s executive producer, said Friday he ‘just fundamentally disagree[d]” with Glazer’s comments.
