Billionaire Len Blavatnik, credited as executive producer on "Zone of Interest" and stood behind director Jonathan Glazer on the Oscar stage as he made his controversial comments, hadn't cleared the filmmaker's speech.
"No, he didn't clear the speech," Lisa Shields, a spokesperson for Blavatnik, told The Hollywood Reporter. She also added that Blavatnik is "incredibly proud of the film and the accolades it has received and doesn't want to distract from the important themes of the movie."
"We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation," Jonathan Glazer said in his speech, standing next to Blavatnik and producer James Wilson. His comments sparked a wave of backlash from Jewish organizations around the world.
Glazer used the pronoun "we" so the audience perceived that the statement was made on behalf of all three men on stage.
At the 96th Academy Awards, where it received five nominations, "Zone of Interest" won Best International Feature and Best Sound.
Wilson himself made a statement on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at the BAFTA Awards ceremony, where "Zone of Interest" won three awards, including Best Film Not in the English Language. "We should care about innocent people being killed in Gaza or Yemen in the same way we think about innocent people being killed in Mariupol or in Israel," he said.
In December, Blavatnik, the 66-year-old billionaire, born to a Jewish family in Soviet-era Ukraine and who now holds British and American citizenship, announced a withholding of donations to Harvard following the controversy surrounding its then-president Claudine Gay and accusations of leniency toward antisemitism. Blavatnik also owns a controlling stake in Israel's Channel 13 television channel and is a major donor to numerous Israeli organizations, including the National Library of Israel.
During Glazer's speech, Blavatnik maintained a steely expression but apparently was not consulted about what the director would say from the stage.
