Glazer, Jonathan

Jonathan Glazer (March 26, 1965, London, England)

Jonathan Glazer (born 26 March 1965) is an English film director and screenwriter. Born in London, Glazer began his career in theatre before transitioning into film.

He has directed four feature films: Sexy Beast (2000), Birth (2004), Under the Skin (2013), and The Zone of Interest (2023).

His work is often characterized by depictions of flawed and desperate characters, explorations of themes such as alienation and loneliness, a bold visual style that utilizes an omniscient perspective, and dramatic use of music.

“You have to find credible people. It’'s a delicate balance. It’'s almost chemical. You have to make sure there are no wrong personalities.”

Glazer has been nominated for the Palme d’Or, two BAFTA Awards, and twice for both the Golden Lion and the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. For The Zone of Interest, he won both the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Jonathan Glazer was born into a Jewish family in London and attended school in Hadley, a district of the Borough of Barnet. His father was a cinephile with whom he frequently watched David Lean movies.

After graduating from college with an emphasis in theatre design from Nottingham Trent University, Glazer began his career directing theatre and making film and television trailers, including award-winning work for the BBC.

In 1993, Glazer wrote and directed three short films of his own ("Mad", "Pool", and "Commission"), and joined Academy Commercials, a production company based in Central London. He has directed acclaimed campaigns for Guinness (Dreamer, Swimblack, and Surfer) and Stella Artois (Devil's Island).

Since the mid-1990s he has directed a number of significant music videos, and was named MTV Director of the Year 1997. He named his video for Radiohead's 1996 single "Street Spirit" as a "turning point" in his work: "I knew when I finished that, because 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. That for me was a key moment."

In 2000, he directed his first feature, the critically acclaimed British gangster film Sexy Beast, starring Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley, the latter of whom received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 2004, he directed his second feature film Birth, starring Nicole Kidman in the United States.

In 2001, Glazer directed the "Odyssey" spot for Levi Strauss Jeans. In 2006, he directed the second Sony BRAVIA TV advertisement, which took 10 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.

In 2013, he directed Under the Skin, a loose adaptation of Michel Faber's science fiction novel of the same name starring Scarlett Johansson. The film premiered at the 2013 Telluride Film Festival and received a theatrical release in 2014, garnering critical acclaim. 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. Under the Skin is the subject of a 2019 non-fiction book entitled Alien in the Mirror: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Glazer and Under the Skin by author Maureen Foster, an in-depth analysis of the film scene-by-scene and behind-the-scenes.

In October 2019 it was reported that Glazer was working on a new feature film based loosely on Martin Amis’s novel The Zone of Interest, to be co-produced and distributed in the US by A24. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023 to widespread critical acclaim. The film competed for the Palme d'Or, and won the Grand Prix and FIPRESCI Prize.

2023   The Zone of Interest (2023)
2013   Under the Skin (2013)
2004   Birth (2004)
2000   Sexy Beast (2000)