Joaquin Phoenix, Ilana Glazer, More Support Jonathan Glazer in Open Letter After Oscars Speech

In the weeks since the 2024 Academy Awards, figures throughout Hollywood have continued to declare their support for director Jonathan Glazer. While accepting the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for The Zone of Interest, a film that centers on the Holocaust, the Jewish director criticized the dehumanization of “victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza.”

The most recent show of support comes from an open letter signed by more than 150 Jewish creatives, including Joaquin Phoenix, Elliott Gould, Ilana Glazer, Chloe Fineman, Todd Haynes, Tavi Gevinson, and more, according to Variety. “I signed this letter to help counter the climate of silencing that many workplaces and industries are facing around Israel’s war on Gaza, now entering its seventh month,” Glazer, an actress and producer, shared in a statement to the publication. “This controversy surrounding Jonathan Glazer is just one example.”

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The open letter also includes signatures from Rain Phoenix, Todd Haynes, Abbi Jacobson, Ira Sachs, Joel Coen, David Cross, Amy Berg, Hari Nef, Tom Stoppard, Kate Barlant, Nicole Holofcener, Mike Leigh, Debra Winger, Boots Riley, Emma Seligman, and more.

“It has been weeks since Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech at the Academy Awards,” former Focus Pictures CEO James Schamus wrote, “But, as we’re reminded by this week’s unconscionable killing of seven World Center Kitchen aid workers — and of countless more Palestinian civilians — his plea for humanity has only become more urgent, as has our duty as Jewish creatives to protest the vicious smear campaign waged against him.”

Glazer’s Academy Award speech, in full, stated: “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. 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 over 150 actors, filmmakers, critics, and more who signed the open letter supporting Glazer boast significantly fewer numbers than the cohort of Jewish creatives who signed an open letter denouncing him the week after the 2024 Oscars.

That grouping — which began with 500 signatures and soon after publishing grew to 1,000 — included Debra Messing, Tovah Feldshuh, Eli Roth, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Lawrence Bender, Amy Pascal, Hawk Koch, Sherry Lansing, and more. “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 group statement read, adding that Glazer’s speech “fuels a growing anti-Jewish hatred around the world.”

Glazer hasn’t publicly addressed the speech since delivering it.

On April 4, President Joe Biden issued a warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate actions,” emphasizing “that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable.” Biden reportedly “underscored that an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilize and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians.”

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