Steve McQueen calls ‘Occupied City’ “a call to arms”
The British Academy Award-winning director Steve McQueen, known for his films Shame and 12 Years a Slave, has said that his new documentary movie Occupied City, adapted from his wife’s book, serves as a “call to arms”.
The four-hour film uses images of today’s Amsterdam with a narrated voice-over showing audiences through a version of the city from the perspective of the Jewish community at the time when it was occupied by the Nazis.
Occupied City is adapted from Bianca Stigter’s book Atlas Of An Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945). On the Sky News Backstage podcast, McQueen noted how his documentary explores the nature of fascism.
“I don’t think we can actually understand the sort of fear and the environment that one was in,” McQueen said. “And also, strangely enough, maybe because of that, people forget it.”
The director went on to discuss illegal immigration in reference to Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who made jokes about the subject at the Conservative party conference.
“I think whatever populism, whatever drum people are going to beat to sort of get votes or to get sort of noticed, I think hopefully people will see through that and understand what’s actually going on,” the director said.
He added, “I think that’s what this film is about; it was a rallying cry as a warning of pending dangers of the right, but also the fact that if you don’t do anything, nothing happens. So, it is a call to arms, if anything.”
Watch Steve McQueen introduce Occupied City at Cannes Film Festival below.
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