The 96th annual Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday night and Monday night Polish time. Two Oscars were won by the British-Polish-American co-production ‘Zone of Interest’, which recounts the everyday life of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp commandant Rudolf Höss and his family.

Jonathan Glazer’s latest film was recognised in the categories of Best Sound (Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn) and Best International Film (UK).

“All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present — not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present”, said Glazer when receiving the award.

“We rejected Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the seventh in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”, said the director.

He dedicated the golden statuette to the “memory and resistance” of Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, “a girl who radiates strength both in film and in life”. During the German occupation, Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, who lived near Auschwitz, together with her sister fed prisoners, organised medicine and carried secret messages. In 1941, she joined the underground formation of the ZWZ-AK (Home Army), where she served as a liaison officer. She adopted the pseudonym “Olena”. During the war her father, a veteran of the uprising in Cieszyn Silesia, was sent to the Dachau and Gusen camps.

Glazer had already dedicated his film, which he worked on for nearly a decade, to her. As he revealed, at a certain stage he felt that the story he was telling was extremely dark and needed ‘light’. That light turned out to be Aleksandra’s story.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński