Steve McQueen defends four-hour runtime of new Nazi documentary: ‘An hour and a half wouldn’t do it a service’

A24-produced documentary looks at 130 locations in Amsterdam that relate to the Jewish community

Director Steve McQueen has defended the scale of his new four-hour documentary on the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam.

The A24-backed documentary, titled Occupied City, is based on the book Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945 by Dutch filmmaker and historian Bianca Stigter, who is also McQueen’s wife.

McQueen, 53, who lives in Amsterdam with his family, told the PA news agency at the London Film Festival on Thursday (5 October): “I think an hour and a half wouldn’t do it a service...

“And what the time is, it’s time reflecting on something which, in effect, could have been 24 hours long, could have been 40 hours long.

“And therefore, you have a situation where we did the best we could with what we had in order to translate this urgent and immediate situation which happened over 85 years ago.”

Stigter, 59, added that the length is a “necessary ingredient” of the film to convey its messages.

“I think what it stresses is the film is not a history lesson, it’s an experience that you are wandering through this town in the present, and in the past, for four hours”, she explained.

“And if you had made it shorter you could not get to that point.”

Director Steve McQueen (Getty Images for BFI)

The film looks at 130 locations in present-day Amsterdam that relate to the Jewish community before and during the Nazi occupation of the city.

While Melanie Hyams, who provided the voiceover, narrates what took place at each site.

McQueen, the British director of 12 Years A Slave and the film anthology Small Axe, revealed that the project did not initially start as an adaptation of Stigter’s book but as an idea that he wanted to create a piece that looked at past and present footage.

“But what happened was, when Bianca was writing the book, I realised ‘Wow, maybe the past could be text and the present could be, as we have it now’.

“So they put the two together and narration and images of the present could be the way to do it. So it was one of those things (that) just fell into place.”

Asked if he felt the project was perfect, McQueen replied: “Perfect in my mind? Extraordinary, perfect, it’s genius, exquisite... Of course it is.”

Stigter added that the documentary was a “unique experience” for her as she noted that they have a personal connection to some of the locations in the film such as where their children went to school.

Additional reporting from the PA news agency