By The newest project from acclaimed “Shame,” “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows” filmmaker Steve McQueen is “Occupied City,” a four-hour documentary with a specific aim.
The film is based on research by historian and McQueen’s partner Bianca Stigter in her deeply detailed book “Atlas of an Occupied City”.
It explores parallel portraits of life in Amsterdam during two key time periods – the Nazi occupation of the city in 1940, and of the city of the past few years of the 2020s with moments of both the pandemic and civil protest.
Across the film, a parallel of society’s behavior is drawn between the Nazi party’s traction in the country in the early 1940s and the disturbingly similar rise of 21st-century far-right movements.
As McQueen tells Indiewire, the juxtaposing of the two time periods came naturally to the project:
“With the rise of the far right being very vocal and given an actual platform, it’s being legitimized. I think when you get the images of what’s happening now and the actual stories of the past and put them together, it makes us question everything.”
A24 is set to distribute the film which is set to premiere in U.S. theaters on December 25th.
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