Jonathan Glazer

Jonathan Glazer (born 26 March 1965) is an English filmmaker. He began his career in theatre before transitioning into film, directing the features Sexy Beast, Birth (2004), Under the Skin (2013), and The Zone of Interest (2023). His accolades include a BAFTA Award, a British Independent Film Award, and a César Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards.

Glazer's work is defined by depictions of flawed and desperate characters, by themes such as alienation, loneliness and individualism, and by a bold visual style which uses an omniscient perspective and dramatic music. For the historical drama The Zone of Interest, he won the Grand Prix at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film and received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Glazer also accepted the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film on behalf of the United Kingdom.

Glazer has directed music videos for acts including Blur, Massive Attack, Radiohead, Richard Ashcroft and Jamiroquai. He received nominations for the MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction for his videos for Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" (1996) and Radiohead's "Karma Police" (1997). He has directed commercials for brands including Kodak, Sony, Nike, Barclays, Guinness and Alexander McQueen.

Early life and education

Jonathan Glazer was born on 26 March 1965 in London, England, and is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. His ancestors were Ukrainian Jews and Bessarabian Jews who fled the Kishinev pogrom and arrived in the United Kingdom in the 1900s. He said: "My great-grandparents were born in Vilnius and Odesa. One was a tailor. His wife, a seamstress."

Glazer attended the Jewish Free School, then located in the borough of Camden. During his childhood, he participated in the Givat Washington programme, spending five months in a religious boarding school in Israel. After finishing high school, he went to art school, saying drawing was the only thing he was good at.

Career 1993–1999: Music videos In 1993, Glazer wrote and directed three short films ("Mad", "Pool" and "Commission"), and joined Academy Commercials, a production company based in Central London. He directed campaigns for Guinness (Dreamer, Swimblack and Surfer) and Stella Artois (Devil's Island).

Glazer directed the music videos for "Karmacoma" by Massive Attack and "The Universal" by Blur, both released in 1995. He worked with Radiohead on their videos for "Street Spirit" (1996) and "Karma Police" (1997). He said "Street Spirit" was a turning point in his work: "I knew when I finished that, because [Radiohead] found their own voices as an artist, at that point, I felt like I got close to whatever mine was, and I felt confident that I could do things that emoted, that had some kind of poetic as well as prosaic value."

Glazer won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction in 1997 for his work on "Karma Police" and Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" (1996). He was unsatisfied with his "Karma Police" video, saying he had "missed emotionally and dramatically". In 2000, Glazer worked with Mellis and Scinto again, directing his first feature, the gangster film Sexy Beast. Ben Kingsley was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 2004, Glazer directed his second feature film, Birth, starring Nicole Kidman.

In 2002, Glazer directed the "Odyssey" spot for Levi Strauss jeans. In 2006, he directed the second Sony BRAVIA TV advertisement, which took ten days and 250 people to film. It was filmed at an estate in Glasgow, and featured paint exploding all over the tower blocks. Later the same year, he was commissioned to make a television advert for the new Motorola Red phone. The advertisement, showing two naked black bodies emerging from a lump of flesh rotating on a potter's wheel, was due to air in September 2006 but was shelved by Motorola. The advertisement was to benefit several charities in Africa.

2013: Under the Skin

In 2013, Glazer directed Under the Skin, a loose adaptation of the 2000 novel by Michel Faber, starring Scarlett Johansson. It premiered at the 2013 Telluride Film Festival and received a theatrical release in 2014. The film was named the best film of 2014 by numerous critics and publications, was included in many best-of-the-decade lists, and ranked 61st on the BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century list, an international poll of 177 top critics.

2019–present: The Zone of Interest Glazer's fourth feature film, The Zone of Interest, based loosely on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival to acclaim. It competed for the Palme d'Or, and won the Grand Prix and FIPRESCI Prize. The Zone of Interest won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, becoming the first British film to do so.

In his acceptance speech at the 96th Academy Awards, Glazer addressed the ongoing Gaza war:

Personal life Known to be discreet about his private life, Glazer is married to the visual effects supervisor Rachael Penfold. They live in Camden, North London with their three children. Glazer named Stanley Kubrick as his favourite director and said he was close to Italian and Russian cinema, citing Ingmar Bergman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Federico Fellini, and Pier Paolo Pasolini as his greatest influences. Music video Year Title Artist

Commercials

Idents Channel 4 presentation (September 2015)

Awards and nominations