‘Occupied City’ Review: Steve McQueen’s Cannes Documentary On Nazi Occupation Of Amsterdam Takes Its Place Among Great WW II-Themed Films

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Nearly every mainstream animated feature (and just about every comic-book movie too) sets a tone and visual design that the audience plugs into; the movie, bold and shiny and clever as it may be, won’t deviate much from that. But the images in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” have an intoxicating unpredictability. The film makes you feel like you’re dropping through the floors of a modern art museum on acid, yet there’s a thrilling moment-to-moment logic to it all. The madly eclectic images express something — an eyeball-tickling explosion of quantum physics, or a subliminal nod to some comic-book style from decades ago that’s so retro it’s new, not to mention bedazzling. This feels like it could have been the first movie designed to earn a thumbs up from Andy Warhol and Stephen Hawking.

Documentary fans might be forgiven for nurturing a dream – that Cannes would follow the recent example of Venice and Berlin and award its top prize to a nonfiction film. Complete the documentary Triple Crown – the Golden Lion, the Golden Bear and the Palme d’or.

Roger Waters‘ concert in Frankfurt on Sunday (May 28).The Pink Floyd musician has faced numerous accusations of anti-semitism in recent months, also facing controversy over Nazi-style clothing worn at a recent gig in the German capital, which will now be investigated by Berlin police.

Roger Waters has shared a statement in which he calls the recent controversy over his Berlin gig a “smear” aiming to “silence” him.This week, it was revealed that the former Pink Floyd member is to be investigated by Berlin police over Nazi-style clothing worn at a recent gig of his in the German capital.The gig came after Waters provoked backlash after making a reference to Anne Frank at one of his earlier concerts in Germany, in which he wore an outfit that some deemed as having connotations to the Second World War.This particular segment of the show revolved around a character from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’, who imagines himself as a fictional fascist dictator during a hallucination.

Roger Waters is to be investigated by Berlin police over Nazi-style clothing worn at a recent gig of his in the German capital.Earlier this month (May 17), Waters provoked backlash after making a reference to Anne Frank at one of his concerts in Germany. The former Pink Floyd member also pretended to fire a rifle during part of his set, and wore an outfit that some deemed as having connotations to the Second World War.This particular segment of the show revolved around a character from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’, who imagines himself as a fictional fascist dictator during a hallucination.

troubled Waters strikes again. Controversial rock frontman Roger Waters is back in hot water after seemingly cosplaying as a Nazi SS officer — and comparing deceased Al Jazeera journalist Abu Akleh to Anne Frank at a recent concert in Germany.The inflammatory performance, which went down last week at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin, opened up with an announcement on a screen that read: “On a matter of public interest: a court in Frankfurt has ruled that I am not an antisemite.““Just to be clear, I condemn antisemitism unreservedly,” the message continued, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Roger Waters has provoked backlash after making a reference to Anne Frank at one of his concerts in Germany.Taking place in Berlin last week (May 17), the former Pink Floyd member also pretended to fire a rifle during part of his set, and wore an outfit that some deemed as having connotations to the Second World War.The show was part of the ongoing leg of his ‘This Is Not A Drill’ farewell tour, and was one of the two shows that were originally cancelled in the country following controversy regarding comments which many viewed as anti-semitic.Both shows — set for Berlin and Frankfurt — were initially cancelled by the municipal government due to the musician’s views on Israel.

CANNES – For someone who is notoriously media-shy, Wes Anderson was in a delightful mood at the press conference for his new film, “Asteroid City.” And considering the star power alongside him on the dias, he dominated the conversation. Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise considering the power of his cinematic brand.

Chinese director Wang Bing is more than content to take his time. His documentary Youth (Spring), which premiered in competition at Cannes last Thursday, runs three-and-a-half hours long. His second Cannes film, Man in Black, runs considerably shorter at a mere 60 minutes, but it too unfolds patiently.

Marta Balaga  Zoljargal Purevdash’s “If Only I Could Hibernate,” the first Mongolian film to be shown in Cannes’ official selection, marks another important step for the industry that’s ready to make some moves.  “Things are looking up,” observes the director, mentioning the newly established Mongolian National Film Council and Mongolian Film Fund. “Mongolia just introduced its new film law [which came into force in January 2022] so it’s really starting right now. I hope we will be able to make more films in the future.”  Her debut feature, presented at Un Certain Regard, was produced by Amygdala Films and France’s Urban Factory, with Urban Sales also on board. 

Using actors to bring to life story elements within documentary film is becoming a more widespread practice, if one that’s still viewed with skepticism by some purists.

CANNES – We are not one to complain about the length of a film. Directors can make an artistic impact specifically with pacing and structure.

Wang Bing’s documentary, Youth (Spring), one of two in the main Cannes competition in nearly 20 years, takes an interesting stance in its portrayal of the garment workers living in harsh conditions in China’s clothing capital of Zhili City.

Cannes Film Festival features an unusually robust selection of documentaries, two in the Main Competition alone, where nonfiction films almost never appear. And if the ones that have screened in the festival’s first three days have anything in common, it’s scale.

Interim Hearts boss Steven Naismith reckons VAR is failing to do its job - and the case for U-turning on the technology is being strengthened every week.

“Johnny! Johnny!! Johnny!!! Johnny Depp!!!!” The celebrity dutifully signed autographs for his followers on the red carpet for the premiere of Jeanne du Barry, director Maiwenn’s Cannes Film Festival opener.

Somewhere in the third hour of Steve McQueen’s documentary “Occupied City,” the camera slowly dollies left over a list of names in glowing green print on a black background, enumerating the thousands of Jews deported from Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. A moment of silence in the audio mix announces this as an important shot, an occasion to consider the enormity of the loss that this four-and-a-half-hour film itemizes with near-comprehensive diligence.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Over the past 15 years, Steve McQueen has become one of my favorite filmmakers. He’s made only a handful of features, but in almost every case he takes a subject of extraordinary magnitude (the 1971 IRA prison hunger strike in “Hunger,” the complex horrors of slavery in “12 Years a Slave,” the collision of gritty city politics and feminine revolt in “Widows,” the epochal crackdown on West Indian immigrants in London in “Mangrove”) and uses it to box open your heart and mind. And he does it all with a storytelling vibrance that’s at once heady and populist. So when it was announced that McQueen would be directing his first documentary feature, and that it would tackle the subject of the Holocaust, dealing with the victims of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam (the city where McQueen now lives), my anticipation took the form of thinking: How, with a director of McQueen’s skill and imagination and gravity, could this be less than fascinating?

We walk among ghosts in cities, storied urban constructs with layers of misty memories one can sense in their distinct smells, and perceive in their dated cracks and imperfections. There are hundreds of thousands of such ghosts that haunt Steve McQueen’s audacious documentary essay “Occupied City,” a 2023 Cannes premiere that is as much a hypnotizing and cumulatively disquieting cinematic artifact about the Holocaust and World War II-era Amsterdam as it is a stubbornly single-minded historical art installation.The simplest way to describe “Occupied City” would be calling it an extensive guided tour of Amsterdam’s past that uses Bianca Stigter’s book, “Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945)” as a compass.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Steve McQueen looks stressed out. He’s a few weeks into post-production on “Blitz,” his World War II drama for Apple TV+, while starting promotion on his other, long-gestating wartime project, the documentary “Occupied City.” “It’s definitely pleasurable, but this is work,” declares McQueen with the wariness of a filmmaker who’s just been plucked out of the edit suite. “Hard work is always hard work. You can’t avoid it.” The British director, who was Oscar-nominated for “12 Years a Slave,” didn’t set out to make back-to-back movies about the war, but “you plant seeds, and some come to fruition and others don’t,” he explains. “These two happened to blossom fairly close to each other.”