Watch the trailer for new Steve McQueen documentary ‘Occupied City’
British director Steve McQueen has shared the trailer for his new documentary Occupied City, which reflects on the atrocities carried out by the Nazis on the Jewish population of Amsterdam.
McQueen’s documentary premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and has a run time of four hours. Occupied City is an A24 and Film4 production which is set for a Christmas Day release date in the United States. The film is an exploration of present-day Amsterdam, visiting the locations that were the scenes of the atrocities carried out by the German troops.
The trailer features a narration by Melanie Hyams, which is text written by Dutch director Bianco Stigter, who is also married to McQueen. Hyams says in the clip: “Soon, the Nazis started to ban Jews from parks, pools, shops, cafes and schools – from all public life. In 1941 they started rounding people up. In 1942 the deportations began.”
Meanwhile, a synopsis for the film reads: “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.”
It continues: “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.”
Occupied City is a topic close to McQueen’s heart, as he now lives in Amsterdam. The director was encouraged to explore the subject in his work by calling the Dutch capital his home and stumbling upon its history.
Watch the trailer below.
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