GHOST TOWN
OCCUPIED CITY Steve McQueen and Bianca Sitgter’s doc examines Amsterdam’s Nazi occupation.
Dutch historian Bianca Stigter and British filmmaker Steve McQueen have been married for decades, but Occupied City marks their most significant professional collaboration. The documentary is an adaptation of Stigter’s book Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945, in which she chronicled the Nazi atrocities across the capital.
But even at an epic 4hr 22m runtime, the couple tell Teasers that plenty of tragic tales and ‘banal evil’ didn’t make the final cut. ‘It’s not in the film,’ Stigter says. ‘But during one of the biggest round-ups where Jews were ordered to come out of their houses, there is an account I found of a guy who writes in his diary: “These poor people, it’s so sad. But we also picked three pounds of cherries, so I was tired but happy.”’
That cheerful disposition when bearing witness to one of the greatest evils committed by humanity is only part of what makes the occupation of Amsterdam so fascinating and disturbing. The city wasn’t bombed during WW2 like McQueen’s native London, but he explains, ‘In the UK that time is seen as a glorious past, but in Amsterdam there’s more than a slight hint of shame in having been occupied.’
Even for lifelong Amsterdam resident Stigter, the process of researching the book and making the film shifted her perspective on the city she loved. ‘You find out all these stories, and there’s this feeling of “Oh my God, why, why?” Every street, you think, “What happened here?” but at the same time, you’re living in the present, and you can’t drown in the past.’
Much of what the film uncovers is bone-chillingly brutal. For the couple, some stories hit particularly close to home – their children’s school was an SS interrogation centre. Still, McQueen emphasises his affection for Amsterdam as ‘I don’t think it’s a haunted city. Far from it, it’s a very progressive and joyous place like no other.’
‘I don’t think it’s a haunted city. Far from it’
STEVE MCQUEEN
The film also has some moments of joy – McQueen’s camera captures the contemporary population that has survived COVID-19 and now gathers in parks and processions to look to the future and better serve their community. But whether depicting human solidarity or depravity, the narration from Melanie Hyams and the film’s tone never slip into histrionics. Stigter believes that matter-of-fact approach is ‘very much in the same vein as I’ve written the book; we’re not telling you what to feel.’ For McQueen, though the film looks both at the terrible past and an unpredictable present, ‘there’s an optimism in the tone. A certain sense of wonder and emotion in the voice. It’s coming from a person and place with a future.’
OCCUPIED CITY OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 9 FEBRUARY.