Jonathan Glazer

Jonathan Glazer (b. 1965, London) is a British filmmaker who works across feature films, short films, music videos, and commercials. Since 2000 he has directed four feature films, marked by a distinctive visual style, a prominent use of sound and music, and a recurring focus on isolated or transgressive characters. He began his career in theatre and came to notice in the 1990s through music videos — including work for Radiohead, Jamiroquai, and Massive Attack — before moving into feature filmmaking.

His features moved progressively away from genre. Sexy Beast (2000) reworked the British crime film; Birth (2004), with Nicole Kidman, centered on grief and belief. Under the Skin (2013), adapted from Michel Faber's novel and scored by Mica Levi, follows an alien predator through Scotland in a more abstract register. Between features he has made short films closer to the gallery and the stage, among them Strasbourg 1518 (2020), conceived in pandemic isolation, which takes the medieval "dancing plague" as the basis for a wordless work of choreographed bodies set to music by Mica Levi. His most recent feature, The Zone of Interest (2023), depicts the domestic life of an Auschwitz commandant's family beside the camp wall, conveying the surrounding violence through sound and implication.

The Zone of Interest received the Grand Prix at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best International Feature, with Glazer also nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay; his earlier films Sexy Beast and Under the Skin received BAFTA nominations. Working slowly and against convention, Glazer has become one of the more singular figures in contemporary cinema.