_{Occupied City by Steve McQueen}

One point that comes out very clearly in Occupied City, Steve McQueen’s epic new film about Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation, is that almost every family in the Netherlands has a painful wartime memory.

That is true also of the film’s producer, Floor Onrust of Family Affair Films. “Both my grandfathers were in hiding. They were not Jewish but in hiding because all the young Dutch men were called for forced labour in Germany, very much against their will,” she says.

As a kid, Onrust was fascinated by her grandmother’s stories about riding bicycles with wooden wheels. (There was no rubber available due to wartime shortages). The grandmother would have to travel far to the farms in the north of the country to find food to keep her family alive. At that time, Onrust’s father was a young child. ”She told me she would take these long journeys and put my father in the seat at the back of the bicycle, and hide the food under his legs so the Germans wouldn’t take it.”

McQueen’s documentary, which runs at 4 hours and 22 minutes, is full of stories, many of them heartbreaking, about Dutch Jews being betrayed by neighbours and sent to the camps; of youngsters being shot in the streets because they ventured out after curfew, and of men and women committing suicide rather than risk falling into Nazi hands.

Such incidents are described in forensic detail in the voice-over performed in quite deliberate matter-of fact-fashion by Amsterdam-based British actor Melanie Hyams. Her text was written by McQueen’s partner, Bianca Stigter, and adapted from Stigter’s monumental book, ‘Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945)’. Onrust also produced Stigter’s remarkable found footage documentary Three Minutes: A Lengthening* in 2021.

There is no archive material in McQueen’s film. The footage we see is of Amsterdam in the period from 2020, when Covid struck, to early 2022. It’s shot on 35mm and shows everything from the city’s inhabitants taking to the ice on their skates when the canals freeze over, to climate change protesters marching through the streets, to Sinterklaas celebrations. Every building and every square, from Rembrandtsplein to Leidseplein, has a dark wartime history which Stigter helps excavate.

The film has some heavyweight international backers (A24, Arnon Milchan’s Regency and the UK’s Film4 among them) but this is very Dutch material.

As for working with Oscar-winners like McQueen and legendary producer Arnon Milchan, Onrust says she wasn’t fazed. “It was never a battle. Of course, you could be intimidated at the beginning… but that’s not my nature! We all wanted to make the greatest film possible. Steve had a very clear vision. It was a real pleasure working with these strong partners.”

The documentary draws some parallels between Amsterdam during the pandemic, with citizens forced into lockdowns, and the oppression of the Nazi period. Onrust cautions against pursuing this parallel too far.

“I think people would think twice if they tried to compare the Covid period to the wartime experience. We have footage of one particular moment of protest against Covid measurements when a man can be seen walking with a yellow star like the ones that Jews had to wear during the war. I hope that if this man would see the film, he would understand how hurtful it is to make that comparison. With Covid, all the measurements were put in place to save lives, not to kill people!”

There is one magical moment in the film showing lots of the most elderly Amsterdam inhabitants having their first Covid shots as David Bowie’s ‘Golden Years’ plays on the soundtrack. These elderly folk had survived the war and now were likely to survive the pandemic as well.

Occupied City is bound to provoke anguished debate. As Stigter’s texts remind us, a higher percentage of Jews were sent to their death from the Netherlands than anywhere else in Europe.

“It is very shameful. That is another reason why this film is so important. For a long time, we Dutch have tended to see ourselves as heroes. It’s almost as if everybody in the Netherlands was in the Resistance, but that really is not the case. Of course, the film shows people just trying to get by, but there were also a lot of people who betrayed others for money, the so-called Jew hunters who, just for 10 Guilders, would tell on a neighbour… This documentary should make people take note.”

Onrust talks of a sequence in the film which always shakes her. It’s when the voice-over tells us about those who decided, at the start of the war, that they had no choice but to kill themselves. “It’s heartbreaking. They are so desperate that they can see no way out. It is almost incomprehensible,” she says.

“I felt the importance of keeping  those stories alive,” Onrust underlines of the wartime experiences that the film re-awakens. “We should never take it for granted that we live in a free world.”

For a full overview on everything from the Netherlands at Cannes, click here.
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Three Minutes: A Lengthening is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund