Steve McQueen’s new documentary, Occupied City, is over four hours long, but the director thinks it could’ve been as long as 40 hours, given the subject matter.
When attending the London Film Festival, McQueen told the region’s PA news agency, via Yahoo! News, that his new documentary about Nazi-controlled Amsterdam during World War II could’ve been even longer than its 262-minute runtime.
“I think an hour and a half wouldn’t do it a service,” McQueen said. “And what the time is, it’s time reflecting on something which, in effect, could have been 24 hours long, could have been 40 hours long.”
He continued, “And therefore, you have a situation where we did the best we could with what we had in order to translate this urgent and immediate situation which happened over 85 years ago.”
What is Occupied City about?
“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,” the official synopsis reads. “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.”
McQueen is known for directing 2011’s Shame, 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, and 2018’s Widows. In 2020, he also released an anthology series of five films, Small Axe, to Amazon Prime, which includes Mangrove, Lovers Rock, Red, White, and Blue, Alex Wheatle, and Education. He’s now working on a feature that’s also set around World War II, Blitz, starring Saoirse Ronan.
Having premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023, Occupied City was also shown at the Telluride Film Festival in August. A24 has acquired the rights to distribute the documentary, though a release date has not yet been set.
