The new film by Oscar winner Steve McQueen (“12 Years A Slave”) runs a whopping 262 minutes – yet “Occupied City” could just as easily have been almost two days (!) long, as the director has now revealed.
Steve McQueen is known for haunting films like “Shame”, “Widows” and, of course, his three Oscar-winning slave drama “12 Years A Slave”. Since 2018, however, the Londoner has only directed episodes of the miniseries “Small Axe” and “Uprising” as well as the short film “Grenfell” – but we haven’t seen a feature film from him for a while. All the more reason for him to make waves with his latest project: “Occupied City”.
The documentary epic celebrated its world premiere last May at the Cannes Film Festival, where we were able to see the mammoth project for ourselves. With a running time of more than four hours, “Occupied City” goes beyond the scope of a usual visit to the cinema – because McQueen takes the necessary time, which, according to him, the material simply needs.
“I think you wouldn’t do it any favours with an hour and a half,” the director said recently at the London Film Festival. What may come as a surprise to some, however, is that he did not stretch his documentary to four hours – but rather limited it even further so that it would not become much, much longer. It certainly had the potential, says McQueen.
“OCCUPIED CITY”: 262 MINUTES INSTEAD OF 40 HOURS
Of course, with a running time of no less than 262 minutes, “Occupied City” is not aimed at the classic cinema audience, but rather at cinephiles with a preference for unusual films that push the supposed boundaries of cinema – as well as, of course, at anyone interested in coming to terms with the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam in the 1940s. For this is precisely what Steve McQueen’s latest work is about, based on the non-fiction book “Atlas Of An Occupied City” by historian and filmmaker Bianca Stigter. In fact, however, “Occupied” could have been much more extensive.
“In fact, the film could have been 24 hours long, could have been 40 hours long,” McQueen said at the London Film Festival (via Yahoo!). In the end, however, he simply tried his best to capture this important, already 85-year-old story on film in a comprehensible way. With four hours, he seems to have found a certain mediocrity in the end.
It is not yet known when we will see “Occupied City” in Germany. While the film will be released in North America by indie success story A24, New Regency has secured the international distribution rights – in order to release it either in cinemas or possibly directly via streaming.
