Over 150 Jewish Hollywood professionals express support for director after he faced backlash for speech

More than 150 Jewish Hollywood professionals, including Joaquin Phoenix, Joel Coen and Ilana Glazer, have expressed their support for Jonathan Glazer after the Zone of Interest director faced intense backlash for his acceptance speech at this year’s Oscars.

In an open letter published on Friday , the signatories wrote they were “alarmed to see some of our colleagues in the industry mischaracterize and denounce his remarks”.

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The acclaimed British director said Glazer had ‘understood the possible consequences, which made him braver still’

Veteran British director Ken Loach has added his support to Jonathan Glazer over the latter’s controversial Oscar acceptance speech for The Zone of Interest.

In an interview with Variety , Loach said he had “great respect” for Glazer and that his speech was “very brave”. He added: “And I’m sure he understood the possible consequences, which makes him braver still, so I’ve got great respect for him and his work.”

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The director’s Oscar acceptance speech made Daniel Scharf recall his father’s words about humanity, while Rose Levinson praises his courageous remarks

Naomi Klein writes powerfully about Jonathan Glazer’s “time-stopping speech” on being awarded an Oscar for the best international film, The Zone of Interest. She elucidates the concept of “ambient genocide” where we live lives in the shadow of man’s capacity for and perpetration of genocidal acts ( The Zone of Interest is about the danger of ignoring atrocities – including in Gaza, 14 March ).

My family roots go back to the town of Oshpitzin (Yiddish), Oświęcim (Polish) and Auschwitz (German), where the film is set. Having dedicated his latter years to Polish/Jewish relations, my father ended his last talk asking: “How will human beings face up to the evil they are capable of perpetrating? How will they renew their faith in morality while living in a world of which, in Adorno’s words, ‘we cannot be too much afraid’, and which contains instruments of destruction that put even the gas chambers in the shade?”

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The playwright and screenwriter, who was Oscar nominated last year for Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, has backed The Zone of Interest director

The playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner has come to the defence of director Jonathan Glazer, whose speech at the Oscars nearly a fortnight ago continues to polarise opinion.

Picking up his award for best foreign language film on 10 March, Glazer related his film , The Zone of Interest, to current events in the Middle East.

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. Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanisation – how do we resist?”

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Jewish Voice for Peace and the Auschwitz Memorial among those defending Oscar winner amid backlash over words at ceremony

Jewish figures are speaking out in support of Jonathan Glazer amid a backlash over the Zone of Interest director’s Oscar speech, with some calling his words “honest and brave”.

While accepting the award for best international film, Glazer said he refuted his “Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people” in Gaza and Israel. His speech drew applause in the Dolby Theatre but was quickly condemned by groups such as Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and this week more than 450 Jewish Hollywood figures signed an open letter denouncing it.

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Signees, including Debra Messing, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nancy Spielberg, accuse The Zone of Interest director of fuelling ‘a growing anti-Jewish hatred around the world’

Nine days after Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars acceptance speech and the controversy over his statement continues.

On Monday, more than 450 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing The Zone of Interest director’s speech, in which he renounced his “Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people”.

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If Jonathan Glazer’s brave Oscar acceptance speech made you uncomfortable, that was the point

It’s an Oscar tradition: a serious political speech pierces the bubble of glamour and self-congratulation. Warring responses ensue. Some proclaim the speech an example of artists at their culture-shifting best; others an egotistical usurpation of an otherwise celebratory night. Then everyone moves on.

Yet I suspect that the impact of Jonathan Glazer’s time-stopping speech at last Sunday’s Academy Awards will be significantly more lasting, with its meaning and import analyzed for many years to come.

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The Oscars is the most prestigious movie awards show of the year, one that’s closely followed by hundreds of millions of movie fans around the world.

This year’s awards ceremony was no exception. In the U.S. alone, close to 20 million people tuned in to the ABC show on Sunday evening; a four-year record.

In today’s connected world, news spreads quickly across other entertainment channels. As always, most interest goes out to the big winners. This weekend, Oppenheimer emerged as the clear victor with five Oscars, including the most prestigious “Best Picture”.

Poor Things and The Zone of Interest followed at a respectable distance with two wins each, followed by the rest of the field of single winners, including Barbie, The Zone of Interest, and Killers of the Flower Moon.

The Oscar-Effect

In the past we have seen that Oscar wins are not just about prestige, they can also increase sales. This was particularly impactful for titles that are sold separately, as opposed to being part of a streaming bundle.

On the flip side, the Oscars can also impact piracy rates. This is something we can measure directly, as we did when the Oscar nominations were announced in January. We saw interest in many contenders rise but with Oppenheimer, there was little impact.

At the time, we theorized that Oppenheimer was already widely promoted and seen by many millions of people. As a result, the extra attention from the Oscar nomination didn’t move the needle, as it did with ‘smaller’ titles.

When we gathered the new piracy data this Monday and Tuesday, we didn’t expect to see a massive boost in piracy activity for Oppenheimer. The fact that high quality pirated copies of the film have been available since November last year only reinforced that assumption. The data show that assumption was incorrect.

Oppenheimer Piracy Spikes Post-Oscars

Looking through the data we see that Oppenheimer saw a massive 135% increase in downloads on Monday and Tuesday, compared to the same days a week earlier. This made it the second most pirated movie on these days, just behind Damsel which came out on pirate sites a few days ago.

This level of interest in a movie that’s been out for months is a rarity. The Oscar win convinced many people who hadn’t seen it yet to finally give it a go. This effect isn’t just limited to pirate sites as Oppenheimer also moved up Apple’s movie rental charts , and probably elsewhere too.

While Oppenheimer saw the largest piracy increase, other Oscar winners recorded download spikes as well. Poor Things, for example, saw a healthy 39% increase. Killers of the Flower Moon (30%) saw a healthy double-figure increases too and The Zone of Interest downloads surged 116%, as shown below.

Barbie?

When Barbie and Oppenheimer premiered in theaters last summer, the term “Barbenheimer” became somewhat of an Internet phenomenon. Today, however, the differences between these box office hits couldn’t be bigger.

Although Barbie managed to secure an Oscar in the ‘Best Song’ category, the number of pirate downloads is lower than all other films mentioned here. The piracy volume did spike somewhat compared to last week, but at 28% this boost is rather modest compared to Oppenheimer.

All in all, it’s safe to say that after 95 years, the Academy Awards ceremony is as relevant today as it ever was. While people now have the freedom to watch what they want, whenever they want, their free choice continues to be directed by external forces.

As with all trends today, the piracy boosts don’t last long. They already started to drop off after a day and will likely be back to normal by the end of the week.

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^{Note: The data used in this article comes from Iknow , which tracks torrent downloads through DHT and PEX. While it may not be able to track all downloads, it’s a substantial sample, which acts as a good proxy for the overall interest on all pirate sites and services.}

^{It is worth stressing that this sample only looks at torrent downloads. Views on streaming platforms, direct downloads, and other piracy sources can’t be measured directly. That said, we assume that the trend will be similar there.}

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The fallout from Jonathan Glazer’s rousing yet willfully misconstrued acceptance speech makes him the latest in a long line of artists who have tried to use a public stage for good

There were relatively few surprises at this year’s Oscars – the grand history of Oppenheimer seducing voters, the grand handsomeness of Ryan Gosling seducing viewers – but an otherwise played-safe broadcast found itself in spikier territory when British writer-director Jonathan Glazer took the stage.

The film-maker was collecting the award for best international feature for his unsettling second world war drama The Zone of Interest, set on the outskirts of Auschwitz, when he bucked the apolitical trend of the night to make a statement.

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