Steve McQueen’s 34-Hour Occupied City Illuminates Amsterdam’s Haunted Past

Steve McQueen’s 34-hour Occupied City illuminates Amsterdam’s haunted past

Projected onto the museum’s south façade and paired with a sound version indoors, the 34-hour work maps more than 2,000 Amsterdam addresses linked to the Nazi occupation

Steve McQueen to Screen 34-Hour Cut of ‘Occupied City’ in Amsterdam — World of Reel

Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City” was already an endurance test at 266 minutes, intermission included, when it premiered at Cannes 2023. A four-hour slog of clinical detail, absent of emotion, interviews, or archival footage, the film was adapted from Bianca Stigter’s “Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945)” — Stigter is McQueen’s partner — and played more like an art installation than a theatrical feature. The runtime alone made it a pun…