Two years ago, British artist and Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen delivered a different, fresher perspective on a documentary about the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam.
Instead of images of swastika flags, talking head interviews and a wealth of archive footage, his documentary Occupied City - adapted from his wife Bianca Stigter’s Dutch-language book "Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945" - offered a meticulously researched chronicle that let the audible past collide with the visual present.
Filmed at a time of pandemic and protest, Occupied City draws uncomfortable parallels between past and present, and sees the camera rove over buildings, sites and spaces in the present as we hear of the horrors of the occupation - in which three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population was murdered, alongside Roma, Sinti and other dissenters.
Now, McQueen, who lives in Amsterdam, will get to project his 34-hour silent cut of Occupied City onto the south façade of the Rijksmuseum. The continuous screening will take place from tomorrow, Friday 12 September, to 25 January 2026.
The film will also be shown in its entirety, with sound and voiceover, in the auditorium of the Rijksmuseum on the weekend of 11 and 12 October.
About Occupied City, McQueen says: “The work invites reflection on themes such as occupation, persecution and freedom. The two versions of Occupied City act differently. Occupied City (still) which is mounted on the façade of the Rijksmuseum, holds up a mirror to the city. It presents the daily life of contemporary Amsterdam, which sits on 750 years of history.”
He adds: “At its core is the magnitude of what has taken place right here during the Second World War. You couldn’t possibly hold it all in your head and the passage of time has covered most of it. Living in Amsterdam feels like living with ghosts. There are always two or three parallel narratives unfolding at once. The past is always present.”
The presentation coincides with Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary and the commemoration of 80 years of liberation.
Taco Dibbits, General Director of the Rijksmuseum, said: “ Collaborating with Steve McQueen has long been a cherished wish. In Occupied City, McQueen powerfully interweaves the invisible scars of the Second World War with the contemporary rhythm of Amsterdam. As a Brit living in Amsterdam, he allows us to see our own present and past through different eyes.”
In our review of Occupied City (the “short” 4h 28 minute cut from Cannes), we wrote: “While it could work as a four-part miniseries, the effect of watching it in one go remains uniquely haunting. (...) It can start to feel a little monotonous after a while, but there’s a certain savvy in this repetition, one which indirectly addresses how we have become numb to these stories and profiles over time, through the mythologizing of the Holocaust and forgetting that behind history book numbers are names. And in creating this dissonance between what the spectator sees and hears, McQueen establishes a spatial navigation which is less topography of trauma and more a geographical exploration of collective memory.”
Check out our full review here.
McQueen, who rose to prominence after winning the Turner Prize in 1999, has made his name in the world of film with hard-hitting and stunning films like Hunger (2008), Shame (2011) and his Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave (2013).
He most recent feature film, Blitz, premiered last year at the BFI London Film Festival and his 2020 Small Axe anthology, as well as his short film Grenfell (2023) - which depicts the remains of the Grenfell Tower as shot from a helicopter in the aftermath of the tragic fire in 2017 – are both essential watches.
The screening of Occupied City in the Rijksmuseum starts tomorrow until 25 January 2026.
