Occupied City

From his wide-ranging, powerful visual art installations to his acclaimed feature films 12 Years a Slave (2013), Widows (2018), and the Small Axe series (2020), it’s always an event when Steve McQueen has a new project. A rich ode to the British director’s adopted city, Occupied City takes viewers through locations in contemporary Amsterdam during the pandemic and protest years, while also examining what happened in those locations during the Nazi occupation of the city in the 1940s.

After premiering in May at the Cannes Film Festival, the festival described Occupied City as “both devastating and life-affirming, an expansive meditation on memory, time, and where we’re headed.” The four-and-a-half-hour film is a remarkable cinematic adaptation of the book Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940–1945) by Bianca Stigter. (262 mins. including a 15-minute intermission, DCP)

McQueen visited the Wexner Center in 2009 to present his debut feature Hunger; his exhibition Remember Me was featured in our galleries in 2020. Celebrated internationally for his art, McQueen was awarded the Turner Prize in 1999.

Occupied City is being shown as a part of this year’s Unorthodocs; admission is included with your festival pass. See the complete Unorthodocs 2023 lineup.

IMAGE CAPTION  
Occupied City, courtesy of A24.