Steve McQueen tries his hand at a new genre with “Occupied City.” The film, which will be presented at the 76th Festival de Cannes, is a contemporary and historic documentary about Amsterdam, the British director’s adopted city.

Throughout the city’s streets, squares, and parks, plaques recall the crimes committed by the Nazi occupiers during the war. For four hours, the neutral narration of Melanie Hyams evokes this traumatic past over contemporary images by McQueen.

An expansive meditation on memory, “Occupied City” delves into the past to better examine our common future in the face of rising extreme right-wing nationalism.