Oscar-winning director Sir Steve McQueen says his new film about Nazi-occupied Amsterdam is a “call to arms”.
The four-hour documentary fuses imagery of present-day Amsterdam with narration, taking the viewer through the day-to-day life of the Jewish community under Nazi occupation.
McQueen‘s new film Occupied City is adapted from his wife Bianca Stigter’s Dutch-language book Atlas Of An Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945).
It is the latest offering from the acclaimed British director who counts Oscar-winning Twelve Years A Slave, Hunger, and BBC series Small Axe to his credits.
Speaking to Sky News’s Backstage podcast at the London Film Festival for the film’s UK premiere, McQueen says his four-hour documentary brings back the horrors of fascism.
“I don’t think we can actually understand the sort of fear and the environment that one was in. And also, strangely enough, maybe because of that, people forget it,” he said.
It’s about “bringing it up into the present-day psyche”, he added.
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It’s this psyche that brings the film into the path of Britain’s modern political discourse.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Human Rights Act and its enforcer, the European Court of Human Rights, were created – with the UK as one of its founding nations.
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McQueen’s comments come just days after the Conservative Party conference in Manchester where Home Secretary Suella Braverman joked “I’m surprised they didn’t call it the Criminal Rights Act” while talking about illegal immigration.
“I think whatever populism, whatever drum people are going to beat to sort of get votes or to get sort of noticed I think hopefully people will see through that and understand what’s actually going on,” McQueen said.
Fusing Amsterdam’s present with narration by Melanie Hyams, the horrors that occurred at each film location are brought to life.
McQueen aims not just to reflect on this part of shared history but also to encourage audiences to think about where we are heading politically today.
He said: “I think that’s what this film is about, it was a rallying cry as a warning of pending dangers of the right, but also the fact that if you don’t do anything, nothing happens. So, it is a call to arms if anything.”
For Dutch producer and historian Stigter, this is an issue close to home as well.
“That’s in Amsterdam and the Netherlands too and if this film can help to be an antidote to that, please, please, please,” she said.
McQueen is optimistic though, saying we shouldn’t underestimate the British public.
“Especially because the last five years have been so turbulent, people are switched on. I am very positive about that particular idea,” he said.
“And people understand what’s going on because they’ve seen through a lot of lies, seen through a lot of the situations where people are not telling the truth.”
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Occupied City posits the atrocities of fascism with the present day, and the Oscar-winning director admits it is “a call to arms”, a “siren call” and a “warning of pending dangers” for his home country.
But when pressed if he believes this “populism” means Britain is at risk of becoming a fascist country, McQueen is tight-lipped.
“Next question,” he told Sky News and moves swiftly onto the next interview.
Occupied City is due to be released in Spring 2024.
For more on London Film Festival listen to the latest episode of Backstage, the film and TV podcast from Sky News recorded at the London Film Festival and featuring interviews with Steve McQueen, Martin Scorsese and Lulu Wang.
It will then head to Australia in February 2025, before travelling across Europe and arriving in the UK on 7 July when she will perform for two nights in Glasgow, at OVO Hydro.
Eilish will then play six nights at the O2 in London, and four nights at the new Co-Op Live arena in Manchester – a venue that has been beset with problems as it prepares to open to the public.
The singer will then play two gigs in Dublin, Ireland, at the 3Arena.
A vocal environmentalist, fans are being encouraged to take “sustainable transport” during the tour, which will also feature “eco-villages” and encourage plant-based food options.
The tour will partner with the plant-based food organisation Support + Feed – an initiative founded by Eilish’s mother Maggie Baird – and environmental non-profit organisation REVERB.
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The concerts will also aim to reduce “greenhouse gas pollution, decreasing single-use plastic waste, supporting climate action”, the promoters Live Nation said.
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Like Swift, Eilish is encouraging fans to listen to the collection as a whole, saying on her website that the new body of work should be listened to chronologically as it “hits you hard and soft both lyrically and sonically, while bending genres and defying trends along the way”.
She’s not released any singles in advance, encouraging fans to listen “in one go”.
The album cover features Eilish on her back under dark water with a white door open above her.
Eilish’s last album was 2021’s Happier Than Ever, and her debut record When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was released in 2019.
The mother of Gogglebox star George Gilbey has revealed his last words to her were “I love you”.
Gilbey died after falling through a plastic skylight while fixing a warehouse roof in Essex in March.
The 40-year-old appeared alongside his mum, Linda McGarry, and stepdad on the hit Channel 4 show.
The family first appeared on the second series of Gogglebox in 2013 but were dropped the following year when Gilbey signed up for the 14th series of Celebrity Big Brother in 2014, reaching the final.
Mrs McGarry said she spoke to him on the phone hours before his death.
She told The Sun: “He phoned me at 9.30 in the morning and said he was working – and asked me for his ‘breakfast money’.
“I put £30 in his account so he could get food, and he seemed fine.
“He had a drink the night before, and liked a bottle of white wine or two, but was happy that he was working. He ended the phone call by saying, ‘I love you’ like he usually did. I treasure those words.”
She added: “It was an honour for him to have been my son. We had a blast for 40 years.”
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Mrs McGarry said her son had struggled with the death of his dad, stepfather and her own Parkinson’s diagnosis.
At the time of his death, he was working to save money to move closer to his seven-year-old daughter, Amelie, in southwest London.
“He wanted to be with Amelie, who he adored,” she told The Sun.
“They were on the third day of a job that was going to last a month, and he was going to get money together from that.
“When they were together, George and Amelie were always laughing. She is going to miss him terribly, like we all will.”
Author CJ Sansom, who created the character of Matthew Shardlake, has died at the age of 71, his publisher has announced.
Sansom first introduced readers to Shardlake – a lawyer who solves crimes while navigating the religious reforms and political intrigue of Tudor England – in the 2003 book Dissolution.
The Scottish writer released six further novels featuring Shardlake, as well as two standalone historical novels, Winter In Madrid and Dominion.
His works have just been adapted into the series Shardlake, which features The Innocents star Arthur Hughes as the main character and Game Of Thrones actor Sean Bean as Thomas Cromwell.
The first season of the Tudor murder mystery series is set to be released by Disney+ on Wednesday.
Announcing his death on Monday, publishers Pan Macmillan wrote in a statement: “It is with immense sadness that Pan Macmillan announces the death of CJ Sansom.”
“‘It is an extraordinarily strange coincidence that Chris has died only a handful of days before a new generation of fans will meet Matthew Shardlake, Barak and Guy and co for the first time through,” his agent, Antony Topping, said.
“This is also a moment for which Chris’s established fans have been waiting a long time.
“Chris was so proud of all the work and determination that went into bringing the novels to our television screens, which I hope will bring an entirely new audience to the books and which will maybe also inspire some old fans to return to their favourite CJ Sansom novels.”
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Sansom’s long-time editor and publisher, Maria Rejt, added that he was working on a new Shardlake book but his “worsening health made progress painfully slow”.
She described the author as an “intensely private person” who took immense pleasure in the public’s enthusiastic response to his novels.
“I shall miss him hugely, not only as a wonderfully talented writer who gave joy to millions, but as a dear friend of enormous compassion and integrity,” Ms Rejt said.
Shardlake featured as the protagonist in a total of seven of Sansom’s novels. Dissolution was dramatised once before by BBC Radio 4 in 2012.
With more than three million copies of his novels in print, Sansom was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award in 2022 for his outstanding contribution to the genre.
Born in Edinburgh in 1952, Sansom attended Birmingham University where he studied an undergraduate degree and PhD in history.
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He worked as a solicitor before becoming a full-time writer where he was able to combine his passion for history and law securing him as one of Britain’s bestselling historical novelists.
Sansom was also a signatory to an 2014 open letter advocating that Scotland should remain in the UK.
The author also donated £161,000 to the Better Together campaign, according to published accounts.