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  • Open Letter Condemning Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Zone of Interest’ Oscars Speech Garners Over 450 Signatures

    Open Letter Condemning Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Zone of Interest’ Oscars Speech Garners Over 450 Signatures

    An open letter condemning Jonathan Glazer‘s Zone of Interest Oscars acceptance speech has been signed by more than 450 Jewish Hollywood professionals.

    The group consists of actors, executives, directors, creators, producers and representatives denouncing Glazer’s controversial comments made when accepting the Academy Award for best international film on March 10.

    “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 reads.

    In his acceptance at the 2024 Oscars, Glazer read from a prepared speech to thank his partners and then make a statement addressing the current Israel-Gaza conflict.

    “All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present, not to say, ‘Look what they did then’; rather, ‘what we do now,’” Glazer said. “Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It’s shaped all of our past and present.”

    Glazer, who is Jewish, added: “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,” Glazer said, pausing briefly due to applause.

    He continued, “Whether the victims of Oct. 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

    The open letter this week continued: “The use of words like ‘occupation’ to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years, and has been recognized as a state by the United Nations, distorts history. ”

    “It gives credence to the modern blood libel that fuels a growing anti-Jewish hatred around the world, in the United States, and in Hollywood.  The current climate of growing antisemitism only underscores the need for the Jewish State of Israel, a place which will always take us in, as no state did during the Holocaust depicted in Mr. Glazer’s film.”

    A24, the film’s producer, declined to comment. Glazer’s representative did not immediately respond.

    The full letter and a list of co-signees follows.

    We are Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals. 

    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.  

    Every civilian death in Gaza is tragic. Israel is not targeting civilians. It is targeting Hamas. The moment Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders, is the moment this heartbreaking war ends. This has been true since the Hamas attacks of October 7th.

    The use of words like “occupation” to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years, and has been recognized as a state by the United Nations, distorts history. 

    It gives credence to the modern blood libel that fuels a growing anti-Jewish hatred around the world, in the United States, and in Hollywood.  The current climate of growing antisemitism only underscores the need for the Jewish State of Israel, a place which will always take us in, as no state did during the Holocaust depicted in Mr. Glazer’s film.

    Signed,

    A.M. Driver – SAG
    Aaron Erol Ozlevi – Director
    Aaron Fishman – DGA Producer-Director
    Adam Berkowitz – Manager-Producer-Strategic Advisor
    Adam Friedman – Creative Artists Agency
    Adam Goldworm – Manager- Producer
    Adam Kulbersh
    Adam Newman
    Adam Rosenberg
    Adam Waltuch – TelevisaUnivision
    Alan R. Cohen – WGA
    Alex Anhalt – Sugar23
    Alex Foster
    Alex Horn – Author and Editor
    Alex Lebovici – Producer
    Alex Litvak – WGA
    Alex Meitner
    Alida Michql – AEA
    Alissa Vradenburg
    Aliza J. Sokolow
    Allan Spielman
    Allison Lahav
    Ally Shuster, Agent
    Alon Aranya
    Alyssa Hill – WGA Screenwriter
    Amanda Markowitz – SAG/AFTRA, PGA
    Amy Engelberg – WGA
    Amy Pascal Producer
    Amy Sherman-Palladino – WGA / DGA Writer/director/producer
    Amy Straus – WGA Writer
    Andrea Barros
    Andrea Cayton
    Andrew AvnerAndrew Stearn – PGA Producer
    Anna April-Ross
    Annie Wood – WGA/SAG/AFTRA Actor/Writer/Artist
    Ari Ackerman
    Ari Arad
    Ari Frenkel – SAG Actor / Filmmaker
    Ariel Nishli
    Ariel Vromen – DGA FilmMaker
    Ariella Blejer – WGA
    Ariella Noveck
    Ariyela Wald-Cohain – Costume Designer
    Art Levitt
    Asher Weinberger
    Avi Liberman – SAG
    Avital Levy
    Avital Onn Shachar – Business Affairs
    Aviva Pressman – AEA, SAG
    Avram Butch Kaplan – DGA Jamsea Productions, Inc
    Barbara Garshman – WGAE Garshman Productions LLV
    Barbara Heller – SAG Actor writer producer
    Barbara Lazaroff – ASID Commercial designer, restaurateur, businesswoman
    Barbie Kligman – WGA
    Barry Schkolnick – WGA Writer/Producer/Creator
    Bart Coleman
    Batia Parnass – SAG AFTRA
    Becky Tahel – PGA, SAG-E Producer, Writer, Actress
    Ben Cosgrove – CEO, Leviathan Productions
    Ben Levin – LINK Entertainment
    Ben Mor – DGA Director
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    Benjamin Rapoport
    Bess Kargman – DGA Director
    Beth Milstein – WGAW Writer
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    Bill Freiberger – WGA WriterBob Bookman
    Bob Kushell – WGA
    Bonnie Greenberg – Music supervisor/producer/professor
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    Brett Gelman – Actor and Writer
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    Bruce Burger – Music Producer and Recording Artist, RebbeSoul
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    Bruce Goldstein – The Cat in Manhattan
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    Caitlin Gold Producer
    Cameron Curtis
    Carin Sage – EVP, Feature Film, Skydance Productions
    Carl Schwaber – SAG-AFTRA
    Carmi Zlotnik
    Carolyn Newman
    Caryn Osofsky – SAG actress and director
    Chava Floryn – Filmmaker/Actress Twin Rose Media
    Chuck Slavin – SAG-AFTRA Actor
    Cindy Kaplan
    Claudine Jakubowicz – Film Producer
    Clifford J. Green – WGAW Screenwriter
    Cory Richman – Manager / Liebman Entertainment
    Craig Emanuel – Entertainment Executive
    Craig Singer – p.g.a. Producer
    D.J. Gugenheim – PGA
    D.M. Harring – WGA
    Dan Adler – Producer
    Dan Benz – wga writer
    Dan Birnbaum
    Dan Kaufman – VFX Supervisor/VFX Producer
    Dan Marshall – SAG-AFTRA
    Dan Redfeld – AFM Local 47 Composer
    Dan Signer – WGA
    Dana Min Goodman
    Dani Menkin
    Daniel Alcheh – SCL
    Daniel Grindlinger – WGA WriterDaniel Kaufman DGA Director
    Daniel Lehrer – WGA Writer
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    Daniella Rabbani – SAG AFTRA AEA Actor
    Danielle Pretsfelder Demchick – CSA Casting Director
    Danna Rosenthal
    Danny Manus – Writer, Script Consultant
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    David Grae – WGA
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    David N. Weiss – WGA Writer-Director
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    David Renzer – Creative Community for Peace
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    Debi Pomerantz
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    Deena Stern – Entertainment Marketing Executive
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    Dena Waxman – Executive Producer / Writer
    Diane Robin – Sag
    Diego Chojkier
    Doug Mankoff – Producer
    Eitan Chitayat – Creative Director
    Eli Roth – Director/Screenwriter
    Eli Steele – Producer
    Elin Hampton – WGA/SAG-AFTRA Round Swamp Entertainment
    Ellie Kadosh – Actress
    Elon Gold – WGA SAG/AFTRA Comedian/Actor/WriterElyssa Nicole Trust
    Emmanuelle Chriqui Sag Actor
    Erez Rosenberg – Attorney / Partner at Jackoway Austen et al
    Eric Feig – Entertainment Attorney
    Eric Fineman
    Eric Tuchman – WGA writer-producer
    Estelle Lasher
    Esther Netter
    Evan Silver – DGA Director / Writer
    Fernando Szew
    Franklyn Gottbetter – DGA Producer
    Fred Raskin – ACE Film Editor
    Frederic Richter
    Gabriela Tscherniak – DGA Director
    Gail Berman – PGA Producer
    Gail Goldberg – CSA Casting Director
    Gail Katz – PGA Producer
    Gary Barber – Spyglass Media Group
    Gary Gilbert – Gilbert Films
    Geoff Silverman – Producers the Cartel Literary Management
    Geoffrey Cantor – SAG-AFTRA Actor
    George Gallagher – SAG-AFTRA
    Gil Goldschein
    Ginette Rhodes – SAG AFTRA AEA
    Golan Ramraz – writer/producer
    Gregg Simon – DGA Director
    Guri Weinberg – SAG/AFTRA Actor
    Hank Steinberg – WGA / DGA Writer / Director / Producer
    Hannah Louise Shearer – WGAw Writer
    Hannah Tuber
    Hawk Koch – PGA, DGA, AMPAS Producer
    Heshy Rosenwasser – Musician and songwriter / The Hesh Inc.
    Hope Levy – Sag Aftra Actress
    Howard Michael Gould – Writer
    Howard Reichman – Producer/director
    Howard Rosenman – SAGAFTRA MOVIE & TV PRODUCER
    Iddo Goldberg – SAG Actor
    Ilana Wernick – WGA Writer-Producer
    Inbal B. Lessner – ACE Executive Producer/Editor
    Inon Shampanier – WGAIvan Menchell Writers Guild Writer/Producer
    Jacey Stamler – 705 Wardrobe Supervisor
    Jack Plotnick – SAG/AFTRA Actor
    Jacob Fenton – UTA Agent
    Jaime Becker
    Jaime Eliezer Karas – DGA
    James Beaman – SAG/AFTRA Actor/Writer
    Jamie Bialkower
    Jamie Denbo – WGA, SAG-AFTRA CO-EP Grey’s Anatomy
    Jamie Elman – SAG, WGA YidLife Crisis
    Jan Oxenberg – WGA
    Jared Sleisenger
    Jarred Weisfeld – Publishing
    Jason A. Kessler – WGA Screenwriter
    Jason Newman – Manager / Untitled Entertainment
    Jason Venokur – WGA
    Jay Kogen – wga, dga, sag-aftra WRITER/Producer/Director
    Jay Shore
    Jeff Astrof – WGA Writer/Showrunner
    Jeff Fierson – PGA Producer
    Jeff Greenberg – Gersh
    Jeff Handel
    Jeff Rake – WGA Writer/Showrunner
    Jeffrey Braer Former – SAG/AFTRA Independent Writer/Producer & Theme Park Developer
    Jenn Levine – Writer / Producer
    Jennifer jason leigh
    Jennifer Maisel – WGA Playwright/Screenwriter
    Jennifer Shakeshaft – SAG Self
    Jennifer Smith – GMS (Guild Of Music Supervisors) Music Supervisor
    Jeremy Aluma – SDC Theatre Director & Producer
    Jeremy Drysdale – WGA Screenwriter
    Jeremy Elice – Writer
    Jeremy Garelick – WGA/DGA
    Jeremy Goldscheider – Producer
    Jeremy Lehrer-Graiwer – WGA Writer
    Jeremy Padow – Screenwriter
    Jerry Weil – SAG-AFTRA Actor
    Jessica Leventhal – WGA
    Jessica Switch – PGA ProducerJill Kargman WGA/SAG
    JJ Adler – Dga Director
    Jo LaMond – WGA Self
    Joanie Leeds – Recording Academy
    Jodi Fleisher – SAG/Aftra Actor
    Jodi Lieberman – Talent Manager
    Joe Pearlman
    Joe Weisberg
    Joel Fields – WGA
    Joel H. Cohen – WGA
    Joel Michaely
    Joelle Boucai – WGA
    Joey Jupiter-Levin – SAG/Aftra Fi-Core Actress
    John Altman
    John Fogelman
    Jon Polk
    Jon Weinbach – President, Skydance Sports
    Jonah Platt – WGA, SAG
    Jonathan Baruch
    Jonathan Herman – WGA
    Jonathan Jakubowicz – Wga Writer & Director
    Jonathan Prince – WGA, DGA, SAG
    Jonathan Rosen
    Jonny Caplan – WGA Impossible Media
    Jonny Umansky – WGA Screenwriter
    Jordan Roberts – SAG-AFTRA Actor & Producer, Content Creator
    Josh Schaer – WGA TV writer / producer
    Josh Silver – Personal manager
    Joshua Katz – WGA
    Josie Davis – SAG/AFTRA
    Judie Aronson – SAG-AFTRA
    Judy Gols – Sag/Aftra, WGA, Actors Equity
    Julianna Margulies – SAG-AFTRA Actor
    Julie D. Holman – WIFT Independent film, Director, writer, and producer
    Justin Arnold – SAG-AFTRA Actor
    Kadia Saraf – SAG and WGA-E Actor and Writer
    Karen Morse – WGA Screenwriter
    Kate Cohen – DGA, PGA Producer/Director
    Keetgi Kogan Steinberg – WGA Writer/Producer/Showrunner
    Keith Eisner – WGA ShowrunnerKen Hertz Hertz Lichtenstein Young & Polk
    Keren Hantman – 1st AD
    Kevin Asch
    Kevin Bright – DGA Producer/Director
    Kimberly Ehrlich – CSA Associate Casting Director
    Kimberly Wallis – SAG/AFTRA Actor
    Kory Lunsford – Producer
    Lana Melman – Authors Guild Writer
    Lanie Siegel
    Laurie Israel – WGA, TAG
    Laurie Seidman – Producers Guild Producer
    Lawrence Bender – Producer
    Lea Porter – The Beverly Hills Estates
    Leah Gottfried
    Lee Broda – SAG AND PGA Producer and actress
    Lee Trink
    Lee Weinberg – Weinberg Gonser LLP
    Leo Pearlman
    Leonard Dick
    Leslie Belzberg – AMPAS, PGA Self Employed
    Leslie Schapira – WGA Writer/Producer
    Lev L. Spiro – DGA Director
    Limor Gott – Producer
    Linda Burstyn – WGA
    Lior Rosner – ASCAP Rosner Music Inc.
    Liron Artzi
    Lisa Edelstein – SAG/AFTRA, DGA, WGA Actor, director, writer
    Lisa Feldsher
    Lisa Ullmann – Producer and Social Impact
    Loni Steele Sosthand – WGA Writer, Producer
    Lori Alan – SAG-AFTRA Actress/producer/writer
    Lorin Green
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    M.J. Kang – WGA, SAG-AFTRA Writer, Actor
    Mandana Dayani
    Mandy Mitchell – Wardrobe Stylist
    Marc Guggenheim – WGA, DGA, PGA, Animation Guild Writer/Producer
    Marci Liroff – AMPAS Intimacy CoordinationMarcus J Freed SAG-e
    Margrit Polak – Talent Manager
    Mark Feuerstein – SAG, DGA, WGA Actor
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    Michael Robertson Moore
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    Odeya Rush
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    Ori Elon Shtisel – Screenwriter
    Pam Reynolds – AMPAS / Executive branch Amazon MGM Studios
    Pamela Davis – WGA
    Patrick Moss – WGA
    Paul A Mendelson – WGGB Screenwriter and author
    Paul Weitzman – Literary Agent
    Peter Lenkov – WGA
    Phyllis Strong – WGA
    Po Kutchins – Showrunner
    Rabbi David Wolpe – Sinai Temple/ Harvard U
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    Rachel Kamerman – Art Directors Guild local #800
    Rachel Kaplan – PGA
    Rachel Seymour
    Rahman Daneshgar
    Rakefet Abergel – SAG AFTRA
    Rami Rivera Frankl – DGA
    Raphael Margules
    Raymond Leon Roker – Creator
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    Rhonda Price
    Rina Mimoun – WGA
    Rinat Arinos
    Rob Kutner – WGA Writer-Producer
    Rob Lee – PGA
    Robert Kaplan
    Robert Lantos – PGA Producer
    Robert Rovner – WGA Writer/Producer
    Robin Carus – CSA Casting Director
    Robin Lippin – Local 399 and CSA casting director
    Robyn Bluestone
    Rochel Saks -Manager
    Rod Lurie – DGA, WGA
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    Rona Geller
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    Rotem Alima – Executive Producer
    Ryan Guiterman – Writer-Director
    Salvador – Litvak
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    Scott Melrose – Talent Agent
    Scott Mitchell Rosenberg – CEO, Platinum Studios Inc.
    Scott RosenbaumScott Rosenfelt – WGA, DGA Writer/Producer/Director
    Sepideh Makabi – Director
    Seth Fisher
    Seth Kurland – WGA Writer/Producer
    Seth Rudetsky – Sag/Aftra, WGA East Actor, radio host, writer, musician
    Shaked Berenson – pga
    Shani Atias – SAG AFTRA Actress
    Shanni Suissa – CEO, Jews Talk Justice
    Sharon Bialy – CSA, Academy of Motion Pictures Member Casting Director
    Sharon Farber – Film composer
    Sharon Lieblein – CSA, teamsters local 399 Casting Director
    Sharona Beck
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    Shir Samari
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    Simcha Jacobovici – Filmmaker
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    Stacey Tenenbaum – CSA
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    Steven E Gordon – 839 and 800 Director Wild Canary
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    Tracy-Ann Oberman 0 Actor
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    Yahm Steinberg – Actor
    Yuri Rutman – SAG
    Yuval David – SAGAFTRA, AEA Actor, Director, Journalist
    Ziba Terrio
    Zusha Goldin

    Zoe G Phillips

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  • Video: ‘The Zone of Interest’ | Anatomy of a Scene

    Video: ‘The Zone of Interest’ | Anatomy of a Scene

    “Hello, my name is Jonathan Glazer, and I’m the writer and director of the ‘Zone of Interest.’ So we open the sequence on a prisoner gardener, one of whose duties is to clean Rudolf Höss, the commandant’s boots. So everything you’re going to see in this scene was shot simultaneously with 10 cameras. We’re watching Hedwig Höss here with her friends having — it’s a typical weekday morning in the Höss house. The cameras just shot those women in the kitchen, is running simultaneously with the cameras in here shooting this girl. And she is a character called Aniela, who was real and lived and worked in the Höss house as a domestic servant, like so many of the local Polish girls worked in SS houses for them and their families. I’m following her in this sequence rather than the main characters, because it’s really one of the only times in the film where we can see, and connect, and spend time with, essentially, a victim of these atrocities. She’s not a Jewish girl. She’s a local Polish girl. As long as she keeps her head down and gets on with her work, she’ll be safe. So that’s what you see here, really. My direction to her, I remember, was to be invisible. That’s what she had to do, and to do everything as if her life depended on it. So every action is so carefully considered here. She’s really fantastic. The purpose of shooting — using all these cameras simultaneously was because I really didn’t want to have the artificial construction of a conventional film to tell this story — rather, to view them anthropologically, as if we were a fly on the wall, really, and just watch how they behaved and how they interacted, and not get caught up in the sort of screen psychologies that one does when one uses close-ups, and film lighting, and so on. Everything you see was — there’s no film lighting at all. It’s all natural light. No film lights are used in the film, and it’s all shot simultaneously. And the effect as well, I think, puts the viewer in the same time as the actors. So we are kind of locked in a sort of present-tense atmosphere, as if this thing was really happening. There’s nothing to process in the way that we normally process films. It’s a sort of Big Brother effect, really. And what she’s doing is she is obviously collecting the boots of the commandant. He’s in a meeting. He’s come back from the camps with blood on them, and she’s letting him know that they’re ready. These guys in this scene are two senior engineers from a crematorium firm called Topf & Sons, who built and supplied crematorium to the various concentration camps.” – [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] “The tone of this scene really is as if they’re selling air conditioning units. Because to them, effectively, that’s as much as human life mattered to them. In fact, they refer to them as pieces in this scene, not as human beings. And the map that he’s pointing to here was called the Ring Furnace, which was the latest design. They never got to build, but that was the latest design in crematorium technology. And he is hopeful that Rudolf Höss is going to buy it.” – [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

    Mekado Murphy

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  • ‘Zone of Interest’ Wins Best Film at London Critics’ Circle Awards, Emma Stone Named Best Actress

    ‘Zone of Interest’ Wins Best Film at London Critics’ Circle Awards, Emma Stone Named Best Actress


    Jonathan Glazer’s German-language drama The Zone of Interest claimed the top honor, film of the year, at the 44th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards on Sunday, along with the best director and a technical award. Emma Stone was honored as actress of the year for her work in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things.

    Meanwhile, All of Us Strangers star Andrew Scott picked up the actor of the year award, with the Andrew Haigh drama overall claiming three nods, just like The Zone of Interest. The London critics also named Da’Vine Joy Randolph supporting actress of the year for her role in The Holdovers and May December‘s Charles Melton supporting actor of the year. Stone, Randolph and Melton accepted their awards via video messages.

    Among the other winners of the night were Paul Mescal, honored as British/Irish performer for his body of work in 2023, and Mia McKenna-Bruce who received the critics group’s first international breakthrough performance award for How to Have Sex. Meanwhile, Celine Song‘s Past Lives was honored as the foreign-language film of the year, while Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron won the new animated film award.

    Jeffrey Wright and Colman Domingo received special honors at the star-studded ceremony at the May
    Fair Hotel in London. Wright took the stage to receive the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film, presented to him by American Fiction director Cord Jefferson. And Misan Harriman, Oscar-nominated this year for his short The After, presented the inaugural Derek Malcolm Award for Innovation to Domingo, who had received the honor in a small videotaped ceremony in London two days earlier.

    The London Critics’ Circle Film Awards were voted on by the 210-member film section of the Critics’ Circle, which describes itself as “the U.K.’s longest-standing and most prestigious critics’
    organization.” Films were automatically eligible if they were released in U.K. cinemas or on
    “premiere” streaming services between mid-February 2023 and mid-February 2024.

    Check out the full list of 2024 winners below.

    FILM OF THE YEAR
    The Zone of Interest

    FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR
    Past Lives

    DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR
    20 Days in Mariupol

    ANIMATED FILM OF THE YEAR
    The Boy and the Heron

    DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR
    Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest

    SCREENWRITER OF THE YEAR
    Justine Triet & Arthur Harari – Anatomy of a Fall

    ACTRESS OF THE YEAR
    Emma Stone – Poor Things

    ACTOR OF THE YEAR
    Andrew Scott – All of Us Strangers

    SUPPORTING ACTRESS OF THE YEAR
    Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers

    SUPPORTING ACTOR OF THE YEAR
    Charles Melton – May December

    BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMER OF THE YEAR
    Mia McKenna-Bruce – How to Have Sex

    THE ATTENBOROUGH AWARD: BRITISH/IRISH FILM OF THE YEAR
    All of Us Strangers

    THE PHILIP FRENCH AWARD: BREAKTHROUGH BRITISH/IRISH FILMMAKER
    Molly Manning Walker – How to Have Sex

    BRITISH/IRISH PERFORMER OF THE YEAR (for body of work)
    Paul Mescal – All of Us Strangers, God’s Creatures, Foe, Carmen

    YOUNG BRITISH/IRISH PERFORMER OF THE YEAR
    Lola Campbell – Scrapper

    BRITISH/IRISH SHORT FILM OF THE YEAR
    The Veiled City – Natalie Cubides-Brady, director

    TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
    The Zone of Interest – music & sound, Mica Levi & Johnnie Burn

    THE DILYS POWELL AWARD: EXCELLENCE IN FILM
    Jeffrey Wright

    THE DEREK MALCOLM AWARD FOR INNOVATION
    Colman Domingo



    Georg Szalai

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  • “Bodies lie in the bright grass and some are murdered and some are picnicking”: The Zone of Interest

    “Bodies lie in the bright grass and some are murdered and some are picnicking”: The Zone of Interest


    When Martin Amis’ fourteenth novel, The Zone of Interest, came out in 2014, many people still believed we lived in a very different world than the one of Nazi Germany. For Americans, after all, it was still before the 2016 election, the 2021 insurgency, the reemergence of Trump yet again in the 2024 election. People outside of the U.S., however, have always been less naive. Especially Europeans. For the lingering pall of World War II remains cast over everything throughout the continent: monuments, statues, plaques, walls. Constant reminders that to forget history is to slip back into the same dangerous patterns in the present. 

    With Jonathan Glazer’s brutal adaptation of Amis’ novel, a different aspect is highlighted than in the source material. An aspect that more directly asks the question: how does evil not only so effortlessly rationalize itself, but continue to live with itself each day? In the book, Amis does a better job of concealing his main character’s true identity by, if nothing else, naming him Paul Doll instead of Rudolf…as in Rudolf Höss, the longest-serving commandant at Auschwitz. Glazer doesn’t much bother with that, likely figuring one of history’s biggest monsters doesn’t deserve such a cloak. Being Jewish himself (unlike Amis), Glazer’s take on the material is undoubtedly more personal. And certainly comes across that way. His merciless contrast between how someone so despicable lives right next to the very thing that serves as the crux of their despicability is what keeps viewers on the edge of their seat throughout the film despite never actually seeing any onscreen torture of camp prisoners. 

    Instead, Glazer relies on the horror of the sounds coming from the camps. Screams, burnings, gunshots. All contrasted against “idyllic” scenes like the flowers growing in Rudolf’s (played by Christian Friedel) backyard. Or, more accurately, his wife’s backyard. Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, clearly on her game this year with film choices, for Anatomy of a Fall is also Oscar-nominated), indeed, “runs the roost,” as it were. Perhaps being more Nazi-like in her rigidity than her husband. In point of fact, Rudolf is sure to tell her she’s the “Queen of Auschwitz.” This being something she relays proudly to her visiting mother, Linna (Imogen Kogge). Initially, Linna seems pleased with her daughter’s way of life. “Living off the land” and all that, but, after enough days spent seeing and hearing the goings-on at the camp (complete with watching the flames burst into the sky as the crematorium roars on next to them), she departs without any warning. The note she does leave behind with an explanation is never shown to the audience, only the image of Hedwig reading it and then promptly burning it in her own “mini crematorium” of a cast iron fireplace. Because it’s clear that Hedwig can’t “receive” any information that might infect her delusions about what this place really is. What it actually represents. And that is, of course, how the unspeakable suffering of others is always at the core of those on top’s pleasure. Glazer elucidates this in so many ways throughout The Zone of Interest, but among the most memorable is when Hedwig is given the latest batch of personal effects from those transferred to the camp. Among these items is a lavish fur coat and a pink-hued lipstick. 

    Greedy Hedwig is quick to retire to her room and try these things on, even the used lipstick. Because, apparently, Jews aren’t that “dirty” to Nazis when they want to use something they’ve stolen from them. Plucked and pilfered from their very body. It is such a disgusting sight that it makes graverobbers look almost positively benign by comparison. Glazer eases his audience into this more overt form of reprehensibility, opening the film with a black screen filled with ominous noises and Mica Levi’s jarring music. That blackness leads into the contrasting image of Rudolf on an idyllic picnic with his family, taking a swim in the river as he surveys and appreciates the natural beauty around him. Natural beauty that is a stark contrast to the visions he views at “work” on a day-to-day basis. Where “just following orders” meant the mass extermination of millions of human beings. This done in just less than five years. All that life snuffed out thanks to methodical German “efficiency,” carried out by men with the same effortless compartmentalizing ability as Höss. And yes, walls like the one between Höss’ “home” and the concentration camp do make it so much easier to compartmentalize. Something that not only Germany knows about, but also Israel. With its West Bank Barrier designed to keep Palestinians (therefore, Palestinian “militants”) out as they’re summarily abused in their occupied territory.

    The seed for building this barrier was heavily planted by former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who said in 1994, “We have to decide on separation as a philosophy. There has to be a clear border. Without demarcating the lines, whoever wants to swallow 1.8 million Arabs will just bring greater support for Hamas.” The clinical, “pragmatic” tone with which Rabin stated this is a mirror of Nazi “logic” during WWII. And, as so many have pointed out, it seems more than a touch ironic that the very race—Jews—subjected to such cruelty has decided to unleash similar acts of violence and oppression on another race. This being yet another reason why The Zone of Interest’s release comes at such a timely moment. Glazer couldn’t have anticipated just how timely. Not only in relation to Israel with Palestine, but also that “other” increasingly forgotten war between Russia and Ukraine. 

    This is why, when accepting the LA Film Critics Award for Best Director, Glazer remarked, “Obviously the events in the film predate the abominations of these current conflicts by years. But the questions it poses are the same: to ask ourselves to have a genuine human response, to ask ourselves why one life can be considered more valuable than another. Human pain is pain and loss is loss and at their most basic or fundamental, the needs and desires of any of us are the same. Violence and oppression of any kind produces more violence and oppression, not less.” But it seems history will never teach governments and regimes anything, that it will forever be doomed to repeat itself. Especially since, as The Zone of Interest suggests, it isn’t necessarily “pure evil” that causes violence and subjugation and genocide, but rather, a willingness to simply go along with pure evil’s will. “Just following orders.” 

    It was the Milgram Shock Experiment, conducted by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1961, that accented an unsettling point about that Nazi-spouted excuse: any ordinary person is capable of what is reductively branded as “evil.” When coerced by those in positions of authority, Milgram found that the large majority were willing to go against their own personal beliefs in order to “follow orders.” To obey. Milgram eventually summarized these unnerving findings as follows: “​​The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

    Despite ringing true in relation to how the events leading up to the Holocaust could go unchecked, Milgram’s experiment was viewed unfavorably as an analogy for what Nazi officials like Höss and Adolf Eichmann were capable of doing. And even what Höss’ wife was more than capable of turning a blind eye to for the sake of her “comforts” and “needs.” Something most are also willing to do every day while others suffer on an unfathomable scale. As Jenny Holzer once said in her Survival series, “Bodies lie in the bright grass and some are murdered and some are picnicking.” This is at the heart of what The Zone of Interest quietly, yet ruthlessly illuminates. The tragic part being that we all still need to be illuminated about our own complicity in the goings-on of the present.



    Genna Rivieccio

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  • ‘Past Lives’ Named Best Picture by National Society of Film Critics

    ‘Past Lives’ Named Best Picture by National Society of Film Critics

    The National Society of Film Critics has selected Past Lives as the best picture of 2023.

    May December and The Zone of Interest each received two awards. May December was recognized with awards for best screenplay and supporting actor, Charles Melton. Zone of Interest helmer Jonathan Glazer was named best director, with star Sandra Hüller receiving recognition as best actress for her performances in both Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall.

    Best actor went to All of Us Strangers‘ Andrew Scott, and The Holdovers‘ Da’Vine Joy Randolph won best supporting actress. Best cinematography went to Rodrigo Prieto for Killers of the Flower Moon.

    The NSFC, founded in 1966 and made up of more than 60 critics from prominent outlets across the country, annually votes on its selections for best picture, director, actor, actress, supporting actor and actress, screenplay and cinematography. Awards may also be given out to film not in the English language, nonfiction film, production design and film heritage.

    This year, the group began with a number of special awards, including film heritage honors for Criterion Channel and Facets, Kim’s Video, Scarecrow Video and Vidiots.

    The NSFC praised Criterion for its “adventurous, wide-ranging, finely curated selection of films, ranging from American independents to world cinema to short films to classic Hollywood, making readily available the kind of repertory cinema that every city should have.”

    Facet’s, Kim’s Video, Scarecrow Video and Vidiots were recognized for “maintaining wide-reaching libraries of films on disc and tape and making those libraries available to the general public.”

    Voting is conducted via a weighted ballot system, the group explained on its X (formerly known as Twitter) account. On the first ballot, members vote for their top three choices, with the first choice getting three points, second choice getting two points and third choice getting one point. The nominee that receives the most points and appears on the majority of ballots wins. If no winner is declared on the first ballot, the category goes to a second ballot, without proxies. Voting continues with as many rounds as necessary until a nominee receives the most points and appears on the majority of ballots.

    Any film that debuted in theaters or on streaming platforms in the U.S. during 2023 was eligible for awards consideration.

    Last year, the NSFC named Tár as its best film of 2022, with Cate Blanchett also awarded best actress for her starring role and writer-director Todd Field getting the best screenplay award. Separately, The Banshees of Inisherin‘s Colin Farrell won best actor for his performances in both that film and After Yang, and Banshees‘ Kerry Condon was named best supporting actress.

    A complete list of the winners and runners-up from 2023 follows.

    Best picture: Past Lives
    Runners-up:
    The Zone of Interest
    Oppenheimer

    Best director: Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
    Runners-up:
    Todd Haynes, May December
    Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

    Best actor: Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers
    Runners-up:
    Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
    Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

    Best actress: Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest
    Runners-up:
    Emma Stone, Poor Things
    Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon

    Best supporting actor: Charles Melton, May December
    Runners-up: Robert Downey, Jr., Oppenheimer, and Ryan Gosling, Barbie (tie)

    Best supporting actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
    Runners-up:
    Penélope Cruz, Ferrari
    Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

    Best screenplay: Samy Burch, May December
    Runners-up:
    Celine Song, Past Lives
    David Hemingson, The Holdovers

    Best cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto, Killers of the Flower Moon
    Runners-up:
    Łukasz Żal, The Zone of Interest
    Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer

    Best experimental film: Jean Luc-Godard’s Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars

    Film heritage award: Criterion Channel

    Film heritage award: Facets, Kim’s Video, Scarecrow Video and Vidiots

    Special citation for a film awaiting U.S. distribution: Víctor Erice’s Close Your Eyes

    This story was first published on Jan. 6 at 10:05 a.m.

    Hilary Lewis

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  • 'The Zone of Interest' is a Must-See Study of Evil

    'The Zone of Interest' is a Must-See Study of Evil

    The Zone of Interest, written and directed by Jonathan Glazer and based on the book by Martin Amis, has a deceptively simple plot. Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) lives with his family in an upscale home with a lush, sprawling yard. Rudolf finds out he’s being transferred to another location; his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) is angry at the thought of leaving their idyllic life behind. They amuse themselves by boating on the nearby river and inviting guests over for tea. Hedwig is proud of her Edenic garden, with grapevines and roses growing against one high concrete wall.

    On the other side of that wall is Auschwitz itself.

    The death camp is, arguably, the most important character in the film, and it roars at the edges of the characters’ perception. Sickening sounds float into the Hösses’ yard: gunshots, screams, and the constant rumble of the crematorium, whose voracious flames light up the night. The Höss family’s bucolic life is punctuated by the whistles of trains arriving at the camp.

    Yet, thanks in part to Johnnie Burn’s ingenious sound design, the Höss family seems strangely immune to the horrors happening over the wall. They seem so blasé, in fact, that only the most ghastly atrocities seem to ruffle them, and it’s in those brief instances that we get the most intriguing character studies. The family and their home are seemingly at the center of the film, but the real story is what’s happening just beyond the camera lens. Friedel and Hüller do a remarkable job of conveying the hollowness at the center of the Hösses: two people who have signed away their souls for a pretty garden.

    Yet, even in conditions as claustrophobically vile as these—and even in a story whose ending we already know—the film still manages to let in a tiny ray of hope. Yes, we’re confronted with the bottomless evil of a nice Nazi family, but we also see glimpses of people trying to help the Jews and other Auschwitz prisoners. The Hösses have let themselves become monsters, but around the edges of their story, we see people who have kept hold of their humanity.

    The film’s visuals and story structure are stunning. The innovative camera work, for which Glazer and cinematographer Łukasz Żal installed hidden cameras in the house, creates the feeling that Höss and his family are subjects of study, or even surveillance. Some night scenes are shot with a thermal imaging camera, creating a dreamlike quality. At one point, the film jumps forward in what could be interpreted as one character’s sudden vision of the future. At another, as the film grapples with the incomprehensible nature of its subject matter, the screen simply burns into a bracing field of red. In portraying a crime too colossal for words, The Zone of Interest finds its own language to express what feels unspeakable.

    The Zone of Interest is a breathtaking achievement, but there’s one thing that scares me: A solid Holocaust education is absolutely necessary to understand it. I’ve met Holocaust survivors and said Kaddish at the sites of mass graves. I immediately recognize the significance of a train whistle or a smoke stack. All around me, though, I see rising ignorance and denial of not just the Holocaust, but any genocide. When a work of art depends on a baseline of historical literacy, what happens when that work’s audience drifts further and further from that baseline? What happens when audience members literally don’t know what genocide looks like?

    Most of us like to think that we would never support atrocities like the Holocaust. That genocide is the realm of monsters and villains, not decent people like us. However, The Zone of Interest gives lie to that idea. Genocide flourishes under the touch of people as ordinary as you or me, and although the real Rudolf Höss was eventually tried and executed for his crimes, many more Nazis—average citizens who were fine with exterminating people they didn’t like—walked free. As Auschwitz survivor Joseph Wulf, whose song “Sunbeams” is included in the film, put it shortly before his death in 1974: “You can document everything to death for the Germans …. Yet the mass murderers walk around free, live in their little houses, and grow flowers.”

    The Zone of Interest comes out in theaters on December 15.

    (featured image: A24)

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    Julia Glassman

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  • 2023 European Film Award Winners (Updating Live)

    2023 European Film Award Winners (Updating Live)

    The 36th European Film Awards have kicked off in Berlin with several of this year’s hottest award season contenders vying for the top honors from the European Film Academy.

    Justine Triet’s acclaimed French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, Jonathan Glazer’s harrowing Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest and Aki Kaurismäki dark, droll Finnish love story Fallen Leaves, all of which have received major awards buzz, are multiple nominees and all up for the top prize of best European film. Other best film nominees include Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano from Italy, and Agnieszka Holland’s Polish drama Green Border, both of which look at the refugee crisis on Europe’s borders.

    Sandra Hüller is a double nominee in the best actress category, for her starring turns in The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall, and is going up against Fallen Leaves star Alma Pöysti; Leonie Benesch, nominated for İlker Çatak’s The Teachers’ Lounge; Mia McKenna-Bruce, star of Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex; and Eka Chavleishvili for her starring role in Elene Naveriani’s Georgian drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry.

    Hüller’s Zone co-star Christian Friedel is in the running for the best European actor honor, competing with Mads Mikkelsen for Nikolaj Arcel’s The Promised Land, Josh O’Connor for Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, Fallen Leaves co-star Jussi Vatanen and Thomas Schubert for Christian Petzold’s Afire.

    EFA’s Excellence Awards, the craft section of the European Film Awards, were announced ahead of Saturday’s gala. Arcel’s 18th-century Danish Western The Promised Land picked up best cinematography honors for. J.A. Bayona‘s real-life drama Society of the Snow won best visual effects for Félix Bergés and Laura Pedrobest and best hair and make-up for Ana López-Puigcerver, Belén López-Puigcerver, David Martí and Montse Ribé. The Zone of Interest won best sound design for Johnnie Burn and Tarn Willers, and Laurent Sénéchal took the best editing prize for his work on Anatomy of a Fall. Emita Frigato won the EFA for best production design for Rohwacher’s Italian drama La Chimera, and Markus Binder took best score for his soundtrack to Jessica Hausner’s health cult satire Club Zero starring Mia Wasikowska.

    The European Film Academy also presented several filmmakers with honorary accolades. Spanish director Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me, The Bookshop) got the European Achievement in World Cinema Award. Oscar-winning British actress Vanessa Redgrave (Julia, Howards End) received the European Lifetime Achievement honor. Legendary Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr (The Turin Horse, Werckmeister Harmonies) was presented with the Honorary Award of the Academy President and Board, a rare achievement. Tarr is only the sixth filmmaker to be so honored, following directors Manoel de Oliveira, Andrzej Wajda and Costa-Gavras, and actors Michel Piccoli and Michael Caine.

    The Euroimages European Co-Production Award, honoring excellence in cross-border film production, went to Lithuanian-based producer Uljana Kim. Through her company, Studio Uljana Kim, she has produced some 34 features and documentaries, almost all co-productions, including The Gambler (2013), Teesklejad (2016) and The Year Before the War (2021).

    From outside the film business, Turkish executive Güler Sabancı, chairperson of Sabancı Holding, received the European Sustainability Award, for her philanthropic work to promote sustainability practices across multiple sectors.

    Full list of winners for the 2023 European Film Awards

    European Film

    Anatomy of a Fall, dir. Justine Triet

    Fallen Leaves, dir. Aki Kaurismäki

    Green Border, dir. Agnieszka Holland

    Io Capitano, dir. Matteo Garrone

    The Zone of Interest, dir. Jonathan Glazer

    European Documentary

    Apolonia, Apolonia, dir. Lea Glob

    Four Daughters, dir. Kaouther Ben Hania

    Motherland, dir. Hanna Badziaka, Alexander Mihalkovich

    On the Adamant, dir. Nicolas Philibert

    Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, dir. Anna Hints

    European Director

    Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall

    Aki Kaurismäki for Fallen Leaves

    Agnieszka Holland for Green Border

    Matteo Garrone for Io Capitano

    Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest

    European Actress

    Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall

    Eka Chavleishvili in Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry

    Alma Pöysti in Fallen Leaves

    Mia McKenna-Bruce in How To Have Sex

    Leonie Benesch in The Teachers’ Lounge

    Sandra Hüller in The Zone of Interest

    European Actor

    Thomas Schubert in Afire

    Jussi Vatanen in Fallen Leaves

    Josh O’Connor in La Chimera

    Mads Mikkelsen in The Promised Land

    Christian Friedel in The Zone of Interest

    European Screenwriter

    Justine Triet and Arthur Harari for Anatomy of a Fall

    Aki Kaurismäki for Fallen Leaves

    Maciej Pisuk, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Agnieszka Holland for Green Border

    İlker Çatak and Johannes Duncker for The Teachers’ Lounge

    Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest

    European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI

    20,000 Species of Bees, dir, Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren

    How To Have Sex, dir. Molly Manning Walker

    La Palisiada, dir. Philip Sotnychenko

    Safe Place, dir. Juraj Lerotić

    The Quiet Migration, dir. Malene Choi

    Vincent Must Die, dir. Stéphan Castang

    European Animated Feature Film

    A Greyhound of a Girl, dir. Enzo d’Alò

    Chicken For Linda!, dir. Chiara Malta, Sébastien Laudenbach

    Robot Dreams, dir. Pablo Berger

    The Amazing Maurice, dir. Toby Genkel

    White Plastic Sky, dir. Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Szabó

    European Short Film

    27, dir. Flóra Anna Buda
    Aqueronte, dir. Manuel Muñoz Rivas

    Daydreaming So Vividly About Our Spanish Holidays, dir. Christian Avilés

    Flores Del Otro Patio, dir. Jorge Cadena

    Hardly Working, dir. Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf

    European Cinematography

    Rasmus Videbaek for The Promised Land

    European Editing

    Laurent Sénéchal for Anatomy of a Fall

    European Score

    Markus Binder for Club Zero

    European Production Design

    Emita Frigato for La Chimera

    European Costume Design

    Kicki Ilander for The Promised Land

    European Visual Effects

    Félix Bergés and Laura Pedrobest for Society of the Snow

    European Hair and Make-Up

    Ana López-Puigcerver, Belén López-Puigcerver, David Martí and Montse Ribé for Society of the Snow

    European Sound Design

    Johnnie Burn and Tarn Willers for The Zone of Interest

    Scott Roxborough

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  • Camerimage: ‘Zone of Interest’ Cinematographer Lukasz Zal on “Forgetting Everything I Learned” to Make Harrowing Holocaust Drama

    Camerimage: ‘Zone of Interest’ Cinematographer Lukasz Zal on “Forgetting Everything I Learned” to Make Harrowing Holocaust Drama

    To work on The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s harrowing Holocaust drama about the domestic life of an Auschwitz commandant and his family, Polish cinematographer Lukasz Zal had to “forget everything I was taught” about making “beautiful images.”

    Glazer’s film, loosely adapted from the 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis, follows the seemingly mundane activities of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, played by Christian Friedl and Sandra Hüller, as they strive to build a dream life for their family in their house and garden next to the camp. The smooth, stunning monochrome aesthetic Zal perfected on his (Oscar-nominated) lensing of Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida and Cold War would not do for Glazer’s story, which aimed to evoke the banality of evil by refusing to show Höss and Hedwig as anything but what they were: Ordinary, even boring, people who carried out unspeakable evil.

    For Zal, the challenge was to strip away what he calls the “Hollywood approach” of ” fetishizing history” with “beautiful actors in beautiful light [wearing] beautiful uniforms” to find an “ugly, objective” way to show evil “as something ordinary, like mending a coat or cleaning the floor.”

    What made you want to be involved in this project?

    Jon sent me the script and remember reading it and being completely smashed by it. I had never seen this kind of approach to a Holocaust film. This wasn’t the Hollywood approach to this kind of story, which I think often can fetishize this history, even when it comes to how the characters are shown, the way the uniforms are depicted, even the use of color and dark shadows. Here Jonathan wanted everything to be bright and light, everything looking so nice and light and normal. I remember reading this and thinking: I want to do that. I want to shoot this film because I’ve never seen anything like this before and it goes to the core of something I’m personally very interested in, which is why people do evil, how people can treat killing like something ordinary, like mending a coat or cleaning the floor.

    How did you and Jonathan Glazer go about translating that idea — the banality of evil — into a visual language?

    We were talking about this and I realized that for this film I needed to forget everything I was taught in terms of lighting, in terms of manipulating an image, the whole procedure of trying to capture moments, trying to interpret reality with my camera. This would be the complete opposite. It was completely against typical Hollywood cinema, that style of trying to tell the story with nice lighting and close-ups that draw you into the emotions of a scene, of the characters. Our approach was completely different: To create a completely unattractive, unappealing, almost objective imagery.

    The most important aspect was not to fetishize the image, not to judge, not to make any decisions you would usually make as a director of photography. Jon and I said at the beginning the camera in this film should be like a big eye that sees everything. Of course, we did make some aesthetic choices, but I was trying to limit my impact on this film as much as possible, to just forget about my approach to aesthetics, to composition, and just set up the framing in the most simple way possible.

    What did that mean in practice?

    It meant embracing a completely different approach, embracing natural light, even the “ugly” light. When I was taught at school, were were also told to shoot with a nice backlight or in the “golden hour” when the light is most beautiful. Here we were shooting at 12 noon, at 1 pm, 2 pm, at three o’clock, when the light is most harsh. For me, it was extremely exciting, because it was completely against this idea of making beautiful images. Instead what was beautiful to me about our images for the film was how honest and how real they looked.

    I had to forget what I knew about aesthetics, about using the golden ratio for framing, the golden hour for lighting, all those golden tricks you learn and you use again and again: A bit of backlight here, a camera flare there, some shallow depth of field, all the ways you can use the camera to be emotionally manipulative. For this film we wanted a different approach, we wanted to show these characters in a way that would be objective, to try and get out of the way and just show things the way they are.

    I remember one of our first meetings on set we were discussing a scene, which in the end didn’t make it into the final film, where a character is looking through a window, and in the next scene we hear a gunshot and we know that he’s been killed. I was setting up the shot and suggesting doing a nice close-up portrait of this guy, looking out of the window. And Jon said: “Don’t you think that would be really emotional and manipulative? What if we just shoot him from far away, just show this guy standing by the window and not even see his face?”

    That was when something just clicked for me. I understood we were going to make this film in the most objective way possible, using the most objective lenses, the most objective lighting, and the most objective framing.

    That seems most evident in the scenes in the house, which were shot with 10 different mounted cameras, like a reality TV show.

    There was this idea: “Big Brother in a Nazi house” It was a completely different process than what I was used to, because all my work when into the preparation process, deciding where to put the cameras. We’d set things up in the house and would go down in the basement with my camera operator and my team, which was something like 20 people, going through the images with Jon. We’d change lenses, change positions, again and again. It was a similar process every day, with every scene.

    A lot of the tasks I had to do were about preparing the workflow and coordinating the technology. We hooked up all the cameras via fiber cable because we didn’t want to risk disruption in the frequency with a remote connection. So we have these 10 cameras with all these cables coming out of them, going through the house. Every room had a hole in it for the cables, it was like a Swiss cheese. We were all hooked up with this advanced communication system so I could talk to the whole team, coordinating all these cameras and making all these changes. We’d prep maybe five or six hours every day for the next day’s shoot.

    But when shooting started, we just sat back and watched. The actors would do the scene in take after take and you’d have everything in one go: All the shots, close-up wide, mid-shots, while the light is changing, clouds going by, the sun going up or down and we’re just observing with our cameras.

    What equipment did you use?

    We shot on the Sony Venice cameras because they have this Rialto camera extension system where you can link the camera bodies with fiber optic cables to these smaller, 14×10 centimeter detecters which were very easy to attach to a wall in the house or hide in a cupboard. When we prepared the house we went around finding places to hide the cameras because the shoot itself was done with no crew with the actors. We were all in the basement watching on the monitors.

    We shot everything on 6K to give us that extra resolution and on 3200 ISO so we could shoot with amazing sensitivity, with oil lamps, candles. The core approach of the film was always to be as close to reality as possible.

    We wanted the lenses to be as small as possible but we wanted modern lenses. We used Leica lenses which were amazing because they were so sharp. The whole idea was to use contemporary equipment to make it look 21st century, not vintage. We shot on digital and we wanted it to look digital, not like film, like sepia.

    We used very high F-stops to have everything in the frame in focus to not make the decision for the viewer about what to look at but to try and have everything in the frame in focus. It all went back to this idea of being as objective as possible, of trying to do as little manipulation as we could.

    Did making the film this way change how you view other historical films, done more traditionally, particularly about this subject matter?

    I think the approach should depend on the story you want to tell, but yes, it does bother me now when I look at a very Hollywood-type depiction of this kind of story. When I see these beautiful actors looking great in this beautiful light wearing these beautiful uniforms. Because I feel it’s not true and it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t beautiful or dramatic or emotional in that way. This kind of killing, there wasn’t a great philosophy behind it. Killing was like parking the car, like closing a door. That’s the terrible and painful thing and the reason, I think, we need to talk about this right now, at this moment. Because if you look at the world right now you can see we haven’t changed. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about Russians, Ukrainians, Israelis, Palestinians, or Polish. We are all humans, we are all the same. Sometimes we can be amazing and brave. Sometimes we are awful and monstrous. But we need to look at ourselves as we are and not look away.

    Scott Roxborough

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  • Oscar Contenders ‘Zone of Interest,’ ‘Io Capitano,’ ‘Fallen Leaves’ Among 2023 European Film Award Nominees

    Oscar Contenders ‘Zone of Interest,’ ‘Io Capitano,’ ‘Fallen Leaves’ Among 2023 European Film Award Nominees

    Jonathan Glazer’s harrowing Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest leads the nominations for this year’s European Film Awards (EFAs), picking up five nominations, including for best film and best director, in nominations announced via video on Tuesday.

    Zone of Interest, the U.K. official entry for the 2024 Oscars in the best international feature category, also scored EFA nominations for best screenwriter, for Glazer, and best actress and best actor noms for leads Sandra Hüller and Christian Friedel.

    Hüller will be competing against herself in the best actress category, having picked up a second EFA nom for her starring role in Justine Triet’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall. The Palme d’Or winner recieved four EFA noms, including for best European Film, best director for Triet and best screenplay for Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari.

    Other best European film nominees include Matteo Garrone’s refugee drama Io Capitano from Italy, and Aki Kaurismäki’s Finnish romantic drama Fallen Leaves, official Oscar submissions from their respective countries, alongside Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, a black-and-white feature on the plight of migrants caught on the border between Poland and Belarus. Green Border came under fire from Poland’s previous far-right government — Poland’s justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro compared the movie to ‘Nazi propaganda’ — and was not picked for the Oscar race.

    Holland, Kaurismäki and Garrone all recieved best director nominations, alongside Glazer and Triet.

    Competing against Hüller in the best actress race will be Fallen Leaves star Alma Pöysti, Leonie Benesch, who plays an educator under pressure in İlker Çatak’s The Teachers’ Lounge, Germany’s 2024 Oscar hopeful, Mia McKenna-Bruce for Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex, and Eka Chavleishvili for her starring role in Elene Naveriani’s Georgian drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry.

    Alongside Zone lead Christian Friedel, best actor contenders include Fallen Leaves‘ Jussi Vatanen, Mads Mikkelsen for Nikolaj Arcel’s The Promised Land, Josh O’Connor for Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, and Thomas Schubert for Christian Petzold’s Afire.

    Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex, Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s transgender drama 20,000 Species of Bees, The Quiet Migration from Malene Choi, Juraj Lerotić’s Croatian drama Safe Place, Philip Sotnychenko’s La Palisiada, and Stéphan Castang’s mircoagression thriller Vincent Must Die were all nominated for the European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI for best debut feature.

    The 4,600 members of the European Film Academy voted on this year’s nominations, based on “the excellent quality of each film” and reflecting the diversity and inclusion standards of the European Film Academy. The winners of the 2023 European Film Awards will be announced in Berlin on December 9.

    Full list of nominees for the 2023 European Film Award

    European Film

    Anatomy of a Fall, dir. Justine Triet

    Fallen Leaves, dir. Aki Kaurismäki

    Green Border, dir. Agnieszka Holland

    Io Capitano, dir. Matteo Garrone

    The Zone of Interest, dir. Jonathan Glazer

    European Documentary

    Apolonia, Apolonia, dir. Lea Glob

    Four Daughters, dir. Kaouther Ben Hania

    Motherland, dir. Hanna Badziaka, Alexander Mihalkovich

    On the Adamant, dir. Nicolas Philibert

    Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, dir. Anna Hints

    European Director

    Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall

    Aki Kaurismäki for Fallen Leaves

    Agnieszka Holland for Green Border

    Matteo Garrone for Io Capitano

    Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest

    European Actress

    Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall

    Eka Chavleishvili in Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry

    Alma Pöysti in Fallen Leaves

    Mia McKenna-Bruce in How To Have Sex

    Leonie Benesch in The Teachers’ Lounge

    Sandra Hüller in The Zone of Interest

    European Actor

    Thomas Schubert in Afire

    Jussi Vatanen in Fallen Leaves

    Josh O’Connor in La Chimera

    Mads Mikkelsen in The Promised Land

    Christian Friedel in The Zone of Interest

    European Screenwriter

    Justine Triet and Arthur Harari for Anatomy of a Fall

    Aki Kaurismäki for Fallen Leaves

    Maciej Pisuk, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Agnieszka Holland for Green Border

    İlker Çatak and Johannes Duncker for The Teachers’ Lounge

    Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest

    European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI

    20,000 Species of Bees, dir, Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren

    How To Have Sex, dir. Molly Manning Walker

    La Palisiada, dir. Philip Sotnychenko

    Safe Place, dir. Juraj Lerotić

    The Quiet Migration, dir. Malene Choi

    Vincent Must Die, dir. Stéphan Castang

    European Animated Feature Film

    A Greyhound of a Girl, dir. Enzo d’Alò

    Chicken For Linda!, dir. Chiara Malta, Sébastien Laudenbach

    Robot Dreams, dir. Pablo Berger

    The Amazing Maurice, dir. Toby Genkel

    White Plastic Sky, dir. Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Szabó

    European Short Film

    27, dir. Flóra Anna Buda
    Aqueronte, dir. Manuel Muñoz Rivas

    Daydreaming So Vividly About Our Spanish Holidays, dir. Christian Avilés

    Flores Del Otro Patio, dir. Jorge Cadena

    Hardly Working, dir. Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf

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