‘Zone of Interest’ Executive Producer Danny Cohen Refutes Director Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar Speech: ‘I Just Fundamentally Disagree’

variety.com:

K.J. Yossman “The Zone of Interest” executive producer Danny Cohen has become the first member of the film’s production team to publicly address director Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars speech, saying “I just fundamentally disagree with Jonathan.” While accepting the Academy Award on Sunday evening for best international film, Glazer delivered a set of pre-written remarks in which he compared his Holocaust film to the current conflict in Gaza. “All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present, not to say look what they did then, but rather look what we do now,” he said, according to the Academy’s official transcript of the speech. “Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst.

It’s 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 innocent people.

Whether the victims of October — 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?” “The Zone of Interest” follows the story of Rudolf Höss, the longest-serving commandant at Auschwitz, and his family while they happily lived next door to the death camp.

Glazer was accompanied on stage at the Oscars by producer James Wilson and executive producer Len Blavatnik. Speaking on the Unholy podcast, Cohen, president of Access Entertainment and former director of BBC television, said: “It’s really important to recognize it’s upset a lot of people and a lot of people feel upset and angry about it.