X
- 2023
- PG-13
- A24
- 4 h 26 m
- 2023
- PG-13
- A24
- 4 h 26 m
Summary The past collides with the present in this excavation of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam: a journey from World War II to recent years of pandemic and protest and a provocative, life-affirming reflection on memory, time and what's to come.
- 2023
- PG-13
- A24
- 4 h 26 m
- 2023
- PG-13
- A24
- 4 h 26 m
Occupied City
76
8.9
Where to Watch
Summary The past collides with the present in this excavation of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam: a journey from World War II to recent years of pandemic and protest and a provocative, life-affirming reflection on memory, time and what's to come.
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
76
72% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
28% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
76
72% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
28% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Occupied City is designed not so much to provoke emotions as to challenge our capacity for paying attention (“It’s okay to drift in and out,” recommends McQueen in the film’s production notes.) When we focus, we’re compelled to connect the double strand of the narrated past history and contemporary images in front of our eyes.
In its scale and seriousness, Occupied City allows its emotional implication to amass over its running time. The effect is mysterious and moving.
While it can be a lot to take in, Occupied City is a poignant sociological portrait. Through the history of one space, it studies how fascism pushes people out of spaces — but is also hopeful on resilience, solidarity and resistance.
It’s exactly because of the repetitive, monotonous pace and structure of Occupied City, a film that smartly omits talking-head interviews and archival footage entirely, that McQueen’s excursion feels as spiritually searching as it does.
We’re implored to never forget through a format that makes particulars prohibitively hard to remember.
Even with its cramp-preventing intermission, Occupied City’s epic runtime doesn’t deliver the same accretion of emotional power that makes, say, Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour Holocaust doc, Shoah, so great. Instead, it begins to open itself up to monotony and worse, glibness.
In Occupied City, you don’t feel history evolving. You feel it withering, becoming smaller and more abstract, almost bureaucratic in its detachment, until it feels as if the life had been drained out of it.
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 17 User Ratings
8.9
88% Positive
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
6% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
6% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 17 User Ratings
8.9
88% Positive
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
6% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
6% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
There are no user reviews yet. Be the first to add a review.
Production Company
A24,
Film4,
Regency Enterprises,
20th Century Studios,
Family Affair Films,
Lammas Park,
Vrijzinnig Protestantse Radio Omroep (VPRO),
New Regency Productions
Release Date Dec 24, 2023
Duration 4 h 26 m
Rating PG-13
Genres
Awards
Critics' Choice Documentary Awards
• 3 Nominations
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
British Independent Film Awards
• 1 Nomination