(JTA) — A Jewish executive producer of the Oscar-winning Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” said he disagreed with director Jonathan Glazer’s speech at the Academy Awards ceremony criticizing Israel, while the Auschwitz Memorial issued a statement in its defense.
They were the latest reactions in what has become a prolonged firestorm over Glazer’s remarks Sunday. While accepting the best international feature award, the British Jewish filmmaker...
(JTA) – In the wake of the Oscars, Hollywood has been treated to a rare spectacle: Jewish communal leaders attacking the Jewish director of an award-winning Holocaust movie.
The Anti-Defamation League and an organization representing Holocaust survivors are among those now angry with Jonathan Glazer, the British Jewish filmmaker behind the widely acclaimed drama “The Zone of Interest,” which is set in Auschwitz. During his acceptance speech...
(JTA) – As widely predicted, “Oppenheimer,” the biopic of Jewish nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, swept a number of categories at Sunday’s Oscars, including best picture, in a year unusually heavy with Jewish nominees.
But the most talked-about Jewish moment of the night came courtesy of Jonathan Glazer, writer-director of the cerebral Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest,” who used his acceptance speech to comment on the...
(JTA) – The year’s biggest movie phenomenon was a one-two punch of blockbusters with Jewish roots — and they both came up big at Tuesday’s Oscar nominations.
“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biopic of the Jewish “father of the atomic bomb,” led the year’s nominations with 13, including best picture and director, and is favored by many prognosticators to win the big prize.
(JTA) – In a 2022 documentary on the making of the 1971 film “Fiddler on the Roof,” Norman Jewison relayed a by-now familiar anecdote: When producers of the Broadway musical approached him for the directing job, he had to sheepishly inform them that he wasn’t actually Jewish.
He got the job anyway, leading generations of Jewish families watching “Fiddler” to associate that big title card displaying the...
(JTA) — Early in the new drama “Origin,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning Black author Isabel Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) calls her cousin from Berlin to share that, as part of her research into American racism, she intends to learn more about the Nazis’ treatment of Jews.
Her cousin is unimpressed.
“Leave Jewish folks alone,” Marion (Niecy Nash) advises Isabel. “They don’t need you. Write about us.”
(JTA) – It took months longer than anticipated, but “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is finally competing for its last shot at Emmy gold.
The Emmy Awards for the 2022-23 television season, originally scheduled for September, will take place Monday after extended delays due to the 2023 Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes. That means the many high-profile Jewish nominees, including the final season of Amazon Prime’s “Mrs. Maisel”...
(JTA) — In a 1988 episode of the British television show “That’s Life,” British stockbroker Nicholas Winton was invited to sit in the audience as host Esther Rantzen dramatically revealed to him that the entire crowd was composed of the Jewish children — now adults — he had saved during the Holocaust.
That tear-jerking clip periodically goes viral on social media, but now, Winton’s story is coming...
(JTA) — The Jewish tradition of Chinese food and a movie on Christmas is so thoroughly established that it has taken on an aura of ritual. And this year, several of the season’s biggest movies have Jewish themes or backstories of note.
Here’s your Jewish guide to the new theatrical and streaming options available this Christmas.
“Wonka”
There’s nothing Jewish about the story in this new musical...
(JTA) — Ferne Pearlstein re-watched “Life is Beautiful,” Roberto Benigni’s Oscar-winning Holocaust film, around 2015. She was working on her documentary “The Last Laugh,” which focused on the possibilities — and limits — of Holocaust humor.
Pearlstein was struck not by how subversive Benigni’s film felt, but how tame it seemed. In the 2000s, she argued in a recent interview, Holocaust humor had become...
