Presented in Hors-Compétition at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival 2023, Occupied City, the new film by Steve McQueen (Hunger, 12 Years a Slave, Small Axe), is due in cinemas on April 24, 2024. The documentary is based on Bianca Stigter 's Atlas Of An Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945, and explores the personal stories and daily lives of Amsterdam's inhabitants during the Second World War.
Steve McQueen's epic documentary is a paradoxical project. In an extreme duration of over four hours, the filmmaker tackles the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. With the help of a voice-over that follows us throughout the (very) long film, we discover the daily life of this city that the filmmaker loves so much, and where he lives.
The set-up is as follows: McQueen's camera lingers on a place, filming it today, while the voice-over details what happened in the same place during the 1940s: deportations, Jews in hiding, police and Nazi violence... Occupied City is extremely well documented, and given the film's length, we'd be surprised if the filmmaker hadn't covered all the horrific events that took place during this period.
Moreover, the fact that we return to the scene of the crime, almost 80 years later, makes this past fully palpable for the viewer. Above all, this illustration through contemporary imagery allows us to build sometimes surprising bridges between the two eras. If McQueen's direction is to be believed, and the importance he gives to images shot during the Covid-19 crisis, confinement and restrictions are put on an equal footing with Nazi occupation. It can be seen as a new form of occupation, and this comparison can create unease, as the two events have nothing in common.
The main thing is that the story of the misfortunes of Amsterdam's Jewish inhabitants is one that needs to be heard, because it's so moving. However, it's hard to imagine the film being distributed as is in cinemas. Instead, we're betting on a mini-series of four or five episodes, broadcast on television or on a platform. The fact that the film is nothing more than a succession of events recounted by a monotone voice-over, for over four hours, without any variation in rhythm, makes it a radical gesture, but one that is very difficult to access. Many viewers (including us) will remain on the sidelines.
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