Occupied City, a documentary directed by Academy Award winner Steve McQueen, is now streaming on Apple TV and iTunes. This in addition to its availability on Vudu and Amazon Prime Video.
The documentary was released in 2023 and is based on Bianca Stigter’s 2019 book Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945). It explores Amsterdam’s WWII German occupation and the city’s modern-day pandemic years.
“What emerges is both devastating and life-affirming, an expansive meditation on memory, time and where we’re headed,” the synopsis states.
McQueen, who won a Best Director Oscar for 2013’s 12 Years A Slave, also produces the film alongside Stigter, Floor Onrust (2021’s Three Minutes – a Lengthening) and Anna Smith-Tenser (2021’s Uprising). British voice-over actor Melanie Hyams is the narrator.
Executive producers include Arnon Milchan, Yariv Milchan, Michael Schaefer, Ben Cotner, Adriana Banta, Emily Osborne, Ollie Madden, Daniel Battsek, Ben Coren, Barbara Truyen, Joost Janmaat and Clea de Koning.
The film has a runtime of four hours and six minutes. “It needed to be a journey. I felt I needed to take the time to make the viewer familiar with the storytelling process and as they became more and more familiar with it, something would switch on. You kind of go onto another mode, and it’s okay to drift in and out,” McQueen says in an interview.
The documentary’s length means it may in fact be more suitable for streaming at home. It has a 69% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has earned favourable reviews from critics. “In its scale and seriousness, Occupied City allows its emotional implication to amass over its running time. The effect is mysterious and moving,” Peter Bradshaw writes in The Guardian.
“Extraordinary… an epically scaled chronicle where history is very much alive,” The New York Times‘ Manohla Dargis adds.
The trailer is available on YouTube.