The four-hour documentary Occupied City, directed by Steve McQueen, examines the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam and modern parallels. Here’s the trailer:
The trailer has arrived for British filmmaker Steve McQueen’s next project. The Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave director has developed Occupied City for A24 – a deep look into the city of Amsterdam both today and during wartime occupation.
According to the synopsis, ‘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.’
In a recent interview with IndieWire, the filmmaker said: “As much as it is about the past, this film is extremely about the present. Unfortunately, we never seem to learn from the past. Things sort of overtake us.”
Occupied City isn’t the only World War II-set project McQueen has on the go, either. At the same time, he’s also working on Blitz, a movie he’s making for Apple TV+. Starring Saoirse Ronan and Harris Dickinson, it’s set in London during the lengthy aerial bombing campaign that raged in 1940 and 1941. In a May interview with Variety, McQueen said that his work on Occupied City provided some useful groundwork for his upcoming film. “It was just one of those things where we wanted to get in the details,” the director said. “For example, was it raining? Well, what kind of rain? Those kinds of small things that seem to be so incidental but are a huge part of how people think and act and react.”
Here’s the trailer below, ahead of the film’s December release…
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