Occupied City (12A)

Full Description

Where do the memories of a city go? From Oscar- and BAFTA-winning filmmaker and Turner Prize-winning visual artist Steve McQueen, comes this mesmerising and monumental excavation of how the past haunts our precarious present: mirroring it and warning us in plain sight.

Informed by the book Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945 written by Bianca Stigter, the documentary creates two interlocking portraits. One shows the city’s devastating Nazi occupation through door-to-door accounts – tales of Jewish persecution, of resistance, collaboration, valour, and denial. The other is a vivid journey through the last years of pandemic and protest. The combination has a transformative effect with which McQueen opens up a poetic, dreamlike space where unthinkable history and hope for a new future co-exist.

 

Running time: 266 Minutes including 15 minute interval

Contains references to persecution, mass murder, racism, suicide and sex, language

No one younger than 12 may see a 12A film in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult.