Atlanta Jewish Film Festival – Occupied City

A masterwork of historical excavation and meticulous storytelling, Oscar-winner Steve McQueen’s hypnotic Holocaust chronicle vividly juxtaposes present-day Amsterdam with harrowing wartime oral accounts. Eschewing archival footage and interviews, the filmmaker’s unconventional approach employs exquisite, newly captured images of the Dutch capital gathered over three years, including during the COVID lockdown. Actress Melanie Hyams’s sober voiceover, based on Bianca Stigter’s Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945, narrates the atrocities that unfolded in these locales less than a century ago. McQueen’s powerful meditation rewards patience, as it shapes a surreal, poetic realm where history and hope intersect, vividly contrasting devastating and life-affirming realities.