Occupied City opens inside an ordinary Amsterdam house. A woman putters about, clambering down into a cellar to fetch something. But the voice-over speaks of a nightmarish history. At the same address, Jews faced the city-wide Nazi occupation during World War II. With his latest, an encyclopedic documentary, the Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen makes sure that their history doesn’t go silent. A kind of panoramic close-up, Occupied City surveys the Amsterdam where Jewish residents once lived, where Nazi officers stayed, where Resistance fighters holed up, and where some were protected and many others betrayed. The four-hour-plus work has Shoah-size ambition. But instead of featuring interviews, McQueen’s camera bears witness by viewing today’s Amsterdam under a calm, detailed voice-over about the past. —Nicolas Rapold