Listing Sir Steve McQueen’s accomplishments could fill an entire magazine. The Oscar/BAFTA/Turner-winning filmmaker and artist has had a pioneering career: Solomon Northup’s harrowing journey in 12 Years a Slave, stamps commemorating fallen soldiers, installations re-staging Buster Keaton stunts, TV episodes about a party in Ladbroke Grove, and an upcoming historical drama that sees Saoirse Ronan caught in the Blitz. His latest is Occupied City, an epic documentary adapted from his wife Bianca Stigter’s non-fiction book on the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam.
How was it making Occupied City about Amsterdam and then Blitz about the same period in London?
Coming from London, the Blitz was always promoted as ‘us against the world’ and heroic. But 27 years ago, when I first met Bianca and walked around Amsterdam, it was deafening that this place was occupied. I’d come across sculptures and ask what they were for: ‘And this one is to commemorate when a group of people were executed, and this one is where a German soldier shot someone dead.’ The films are confronting that contrast in a way. A city always has a lot of layers, and this history is not that long ago. The recent past is difficult to cope with, and so we end up in this cycle of trauma and amnesia.