Still from Occupied City by Steve McQueen
Oscar-winning filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave, Shame, Hunger) shows us in his engrossing new documentary, Occupied City, how the not so distant past events of the second world war still haunt present day Amsterdam. His film, made with his historian wife, Bianca Stigter, evokes the ghosts of the past, felt everywhere in the city, inside buildings where often harrowing things happened but the film also leaves us with the positive reminder that “the Nazis didn’t win.”
Still from Occupied City
This film is meant to be an immersive experience not a history lesson and yet it is satisfyingly both. While we should “embrace the madness of today” by seeing modern day Amsterdam in the streets, buildings and rooms McQueen has chosen to film, we learn about the wartime history of each of the places from narrator Melanie Hyams, a young British Jew also living in the Netherlands
Steve McQueen and Bianca Stigter attend the screening of “Occupied City” during 61st New York Film … [+]
The Germans occupied Amsterdam from May 1940 until May 1945, transforming the city into one of oppression, fear and deprivation. The stories in the film are drawn from the book, Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945 by Steve McQueen’s Dutch wife, Bianca Stigter, and in fact the pair visited and filmed over 2,000 addresses from which 130 were chosen for the film. No archival footage was used and no interviews were conducted. The viewer sees present day images while the texts describe the past, offering a sense of where the Germans were in the city, where the holocaust was organised, where the resistance gathered and where people hid. Sometimes the film footage shows current events or scenes that eerily echo the past; at other times there is no obvious connection.
Bianca Stitger wanted to investigate and document addresses throughout Amsterdam because she realised that many people aren’t aware of what actually happened in certain buildings. Where today’s ordinary activities take place: children playing, people gathering in parks, skating and swimming, diabolical events often happened, only 80 years ago. For Steve McQueen, discovering that Gerrit van der Veen College, his daughter’s former school was once a place of interrogation, a Nazi torture chamber, was one powerful reason that he decided to make this film.
Still from Occupied City
The emotional power of these stories accumulates over the course of the film, as the narrator calmly recounts the mechanics of both systematic oppression and sudden bravery; both calculated terror and life-saving luck; both ordinary and extraordinary ways of surviving. At the same time, the film’s captivating imagery is entirely of our times, persistently moving forward. The scenes of ordinary activities of daily life sometimes connect with the stories. It is also a highly personal journey, as we weave in and out of houses and remembrances, in and out of grief, indignation, and moments of joy, hearing history, seeing the recent world, and wondering about tomorrow.
Still from Occupied City
Occupied City had to be a long film. Because of the subject, a four-hour film (there is an intermission) was necessary, according to McQueen, as a standard 90 minutes would have been a disservice. The viewer is forced to weave between past and present when hearing the stories of the war, while seeing everyday Amsterdam life. It makes for disconcerting but always rewarding viewing: an essential film for our times. When we get to the end of the film, we simply know how, not why, the holocaust happened. As Bianca Stitger has said, you don’t need to be Jewish to watch this, “it concerns us all.”
Occupied City opened in North America on 25 December 2023, released by A24. It is now showing in cinemas the UK and Ireland, released by Modern Films. The four hour film is screened in cinemas with a 15 minute interval.
