CANNES, France — British director Steve McQueen knows his documentary "Occupied City," which premiered on the first day of this year's Cannes Festival, may not be what people expect. From him, or from a documentary.
The form is well represented at this year's festival — there are three in competition — but none is as epic in scope or avant-garde in structure as McQueen's.
Based on the Dutch-language book "Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945," by his wife, Bianca Stigter, it is a four-plus-hour-long, street-by-street, building-by-building chronicle of what happened in Amsterdam during the German occupation and what each of those places looks like now.
