Amy Schumer Sparks Backlash Over Her 'Movie of the Year'

Amy Schumer has again sparked fury by naming a film about a Nazi commandant at the Auschwitz concentration camp as her "movie of the year."

The comedian, who has come under fire recently for her comments about Israel's military campaign in Gaza, posted a still from the movie The Zone of Interest to her Instagram account.

Israel launched a swift military and air strike after a surprise attack by Hamas on October 7 that killed around 1,200 people. Since then, Israeli forces have killed more than 20,000 people in Gaza in what it says are operations to rescue kidnapped hostages and to eliminate Hamas. A humanitarian crisis has grown in Gaza with 85 percent of the population displaced and lacking access to essential needs such as food, water, medicine and fuel, according to the Associated Press.

"I stand corrected. @a24 Zone of interest is the movie of the year. And performance of the year if you ask me is @daniebb3 in Color Purple," she captioned the post.

Zone of Interest is directed by Jonathan Glazer and tells the story of Rudolf Höss, a senior Nazi officer at the notorious extermination camp, and his wife Hedwig, who try to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to Auschwitz.

More than 1.1 million people were exterminated by Nazis at the infamous camp in the less than five years of its existence. The majority of those killed were Jews, at around 1 million, according to the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum.

While Schumer had the comments switched off on her post, people still took to social media to show they were less than impressed with her choice for movie of the year, citing her previous statements about Israel and her perceived persecution as a Jewish celebrity.

Newsweek contacted Schumer's representatives by email for comment.

"Amy Schumer, who has posted hateful, vicious content against an occupied people undergoing genocide, unironically tweets that a movie with this tagline - 'A Nazi commandant tries to build a dream life for his family near the Auschwitz concentration camp' - is the movie of the year," wrote educator Sumun L. Pendakur on X, formerly Twitter.

Media blogger Jeff Zhang added: "Unserious person."

Another replied to Zhang writing: "Jesus, man. Movie is probably great, but zero self awareness -_-"

The Campaign Against Antisemitism could not understand what the fuss was about.

"What, exactly, is the problem with a celebrity promoting a film about the Holocaust? Is it that people who downplay or deny the recent Hamas massacre want to shut down any other reminders that Jews can be victims? Is it that they worry that talk of Jewish suffering at the hands of violent ideologues and civilians sounds inconveniently familiar? Or is it simply because Amy Schumer is Jewish, and Jews must be canceled?" a spokesperson for CAA told Newsweek.

"Or perhaps it is because this story is an unpleasant reminder to those who storm through the streets, campuses and the internet calling for the genocide of the Jews, about the historical company that they keep."

The spokesperson said: "The reaction to Ms. Schumer's post just goes to show why these films still need to be made."

Another media analyst and content creator known as Big Joel previously took aim at Schumer, citing Zone of Interest as an important lesson to remember during the current attacks on Gaza.

Joel took aim at an Instagram story Schumer posted in October that read: "First, they came for LGBTQ and I stood up because love is love and then they came for immigrants and I stood up because families belong together, then they came for the black community and I stood up because Black lives matter then they came for me. But I stood alone because I am a Jew."

The YouTuber slammed Schumer as one of the "American celebrity Jews [who are] the most privileged human beings on earth pretending that they're all alone in life and then nobody's standing with them."

Joel said some Jewish celebrities were acting as victims because nobody "will let me justify ethnic cleansing," referring to the endorsement of Israel's actions in Gaza.

"I am so sick and tired of seeing these people with pseudo progressive politics waking up to find that they are in fact Adolf Hitler... and now advocate for ethnic cleansing," he said in a video.

"I think the fact that we [Jewish people] experienced a f***** genocide and that we turned around and didn't see the problem with doing more genocides, that we said 'never again,' but that meant never again, 'killing Jews specifically.' Killing Jews is the most disgusting historical tragedy I've ever heard in my life."

He added he thought his comparison to Hitler was apt and referred to The Zone of Interest of how the main character could relax in his garden with his wife as the smoke of burning bodies in Auschwitz rose above them. Joel compared that to how some Jewish celebrities were condoning Israel's actions in Gaza and ignoring the humanitarian crisis there.

"It is impossible not to remember," Joel concluded.

Zone of Interest has received mixed reviews, with the New York Times slamming it as "vacuous" and The New Yorker describing the movie as "Holokitsch."

"There's conceptual audacity in the effort, yet Glazer doesn't display the courage or the intellectual rigor to pull it off successfully," added the New Yorker's Richard Brody.

However, many reviewers spoke favorably of the film and it received a 92 percent critics score on aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.

"Glazer's artful approach and cold sense of remove, plus an unforgettable score from experimental composer Mica Levi, make this a deeply disturbing depiction of the banality of evil, and a Holocaust drama like no other," wrote Max Copeman for Radio Times.

Critic Richard Crouse described it as "a singular film."

"Confident in its uneasy, experimental execution, unblinking in its representation of the facilitation of evil, it isn't an easy watch, but will resonate long after the end credits have rolled," Crouse wrote.

Update 12/29/23, 7:00 a.m. ET. This article was updated to include comment from the Campaign Against Antisemitism.