The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is the backdrop for a non-stop showing of a 34-hour version of Steve McQueen’s ground-breaking film about the Dutch capital during World War II.

Occupied City, released in 2023, reveals the scars left by the war on Amsterdam through contemporary footage. Short, emotionless commentary reveals who lived where and what took place at each of 2,000 locations across the city.

The film is based on the the book Atlas van een Bezette Stad. Amsterdam 1940-1945 by McQueen’s partner Bianca Stigter and is, he says, an invitation to reflect on themes such as occupation, persecution and freedom.

“We can’t ignore what is going on around us,” McQueen said at the launch of the non-stop screening. “As an artist I have never felt more useful than I do now.”

McQueen, who is British, lives much of the year in Amsterdam and told Dutch News that being an outsider had been an advantage in making the film. Underneath Amsterdam’s randomness, he says, is a “huge history”.

“It’s a bit like being in London and not going to Buckingham Palace and doing all the things that tourists do,” he said. “The things which are under people’s noses are often the things that go unrecognised, and as soon as I got here I had this feeling that I was living with ghosts, with parallel narratives.”

Many people would argue the Netherlands is only just getting to grips with the impact of World War II. New revelations about how the country’s Jews were slowly marginalised and transported to their deaths or about unknown heroes of the resistance, emerge every year.

The war may have ended 80 years ago but the trauma is long-lasting, says McQueen, who won an Oscar for his film 12 Years a Slave. “We the British have not even started to talk about the Blitz [blanket bombing of English cities] and the ‘carry on and keep calm’ mentality,” he said. “It’s a long healing process.”

Much of the film was recorded during the coronavirus pandemic when Amsterdam’s streets were deserted. In one scene, a sign warning people to keep 1.5 metres apart slides into view in an empty red light district. In another, featuring a WWII student house, two feet clad in white socks wiggle at the window.

“We started shooting and Covid was one of the things that happened, so we just embraced it,” said McQueen. “We caught the world as it was.”

Stigter said she was driven to write the book on which the film is based out of curiosity. “In Amsterdam you can see the history of the 17th century and you can see what is around you today but this part of history, the trauma and murder of so many people just because of who they are, is not visible,” she said.

“I tried to uncover and bring back the past, to show this is where people were taken away during the round-ups, that this is the main building where the collaborators were housed. I wanted to bring the war out of the mists of history and bring it into view.”

The full film will be shown non-stop on a big screen on the Museumplein side of the museum without sound until January 25. Inside the museum itself, a version with sound and voice-over will be screened in the auditorium during opening hours.