Friday 9 February sees the UK release of Occupied City, a four-hour-plus documentary by the British director Steve McQueen, who in 2014 became the first Black film-maker to win an Oscar for best picture. As director and producer of 12 Years a Slave, McQueen (who was knighted in 2020) established himself as a pioneer of modern cinema. Yet as he demonstrates with Occupied City, which juxtaposes chillingly factual narration about Nazi atrocities in German-occupied Amsterdam with modern-day images of the city, he has never turned his back on his roots in visual art. Indeed, McQueen’s latest, based on his partner/co-producer...