Epic documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Steve McQueen

Where do the memories of a city go? From Oscar and BAFTA-winning filmmaker and Turner Prize-winning visual artist Steve McQueen, comes this mesmerising and monumental excavation of how the past haunts our precarious present: mirroring it and warning us in plain sight.

Informed by the book Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945 written by Bianca Stigter, the documentary creates two interlocking portraits. One shows the city’s devastating Nazi occupation through door-to-door accounts – tales of Jewish persecution, of resistance, collaboration, valour, and denial. The other is a vivid journey through the last years of pandemic and protest. The combination has a transformative effect with which McQueen opens up a poetic, dreamlike space where unthinkable history and hope for a new future co-exist.

The screening will be followed by a post-screening discussion with Steve McQueen and Bianca Stigter, broadcasted live from the Barbican.

There is a 15 minute intermission in this film

★★★★★ Mysterious and moving” The Guardian
★★★★★ A singular masterwork Irish Times
★★★★★ Hypnotic study of an Amsterdam still haunted by Nazis Daily Telegraph

Please Note This is a cinema event with a film and broadcast Q&A
BBFC Insight: references to persecution, mass murder, racism, suicide and sex, language
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