SYNOPSIS
The past collides with our precarious present in Steve McQueen’s bravura documentary Occupied City, informed by the book Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945 written by Bianca Stigter. McQueen creates two interlocking portraits: a door-to-door excavation of the Nazi occupation that still haunts his adopted city, and a vivid journey through the last years of pandemic and protest. What emerges is both devastating and life-affirming, an expansive meditation on memory, time, and where we’re headed.
＊This screening includes a 15-minute intermission.
REVIEW
Steve McQueen's documentary film, Occupied City, reveals the hidden history of Amsterdam, a canal city optimized for tourism. Adapted from the book Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945 by McQueen's wife and producer Bianca Stigter, the film is a four-hour collection of observational footage of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. The film features narration by actress Melanie Hyams, juxtaposed with images of modern-day Amsterdam. The narration dryly recounts the stories of the people and the city during the Nazi occupation, stories that usually end in murder. McQueen draws parallels between the past and present to reveal how state power and citizens reacted to these events. For example, in one scene, a woman walks up and down the stairs leading to the basement of a house. The soundtrack tells us that a Jewish fugitive hid in the elevator of this house for days during the Nazi occupation. The counterpoint between the narration and the everyday activities on screen recalls Hannah Arendt's idea that evil exists in ordinary and banal environments, environments that can easily become our own. The locations of contemporary Amsterdam correspond to places from the past mentioned in the voiceover, but the images are presented without context, and the narration never goes beyond cataloging the horrors. The camera glides through the city, experimenting with the reverberations of a sense of time and place in a quiet and unassuming way.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
It’s strange living in a formerly occupied country. For me, it’s been like living with ghosts. There are two narratives going on at the same time, all the time. This idea of the present interacting with the past, the living and the dead, is what led to the film. That was the seed for me.
CONTACT
mk2 Films
anne-laure.barbarit@mk2.com
