Oscar 2024: Jonathan Glazer shares powerful and emotional speech upon receiving the award

‘The Zone of Interest’, by British director Jonathan Glazer, took the Oscar for best international film to ‘The Snow Society’, by Juan Antonio Bayona, the Spanish entry in the category.

“The film shows that dehumanization brings out the worst in us, and we can see it with our past and present,” said Glazer when accepting the award from the Puerto Rican Bad Bunny.

“Whether they are the victims of the October 7 attack (Hamas), or the ongoing offensive against Gaza, they have all been victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist?”added the director.

The film, set in World War II, also won against the Italian film ‘Io Capitano’, by Matteo Garrone; the Japanese ‘Perfect Days’, by Wim Wenders, and the German ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’, by Ilker Çatak.

Glazer’s film also became the first British film to win the award in this category, because since 2019 the Hollywood Academy changed the section from best foreign language film to best international film.

‘The Zone of Interest’ tells the supposed idyllic life of a Nazi officer in a garden house next to the Auschwitz concentration camp and was considered by directors of the stature of Alfonso Cuarón as “the film of the century.”

For his part, Bayona had navigated the awards season without major victories at the international galas for which he was nominated, such as the Golden Globes or the Critics Choice Awards.

However, it was the great winner of the Spanish Goya Awards, winning twelve awards, including best film and best direction.

The film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, is about the story of the sixteen survivors of the “tragedy of the Andes,” a plane accident that occurred in 1972, when an aircraft carrying members of the Old Christians Club rugby club Montevideo crashed in the Andes mountain range.

With information from EFE