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‘I wasn’t interested in Churchill’: Steve McQueen on the ‘ordinary people’ in his film Blitz

Director’s second world war feature is a grimy, chaotic look at Londoners navigating their way through hell

It’s grimy and chaotic: people pick over dead bodies for valuables, fire crews wrestle with out-of-control hoses, while others find sexual freedom in the fog of war – it all happens during a story that focuses on a child’s attempt to make his way back to his mother after being evacuated. McQueen said the new portrayal of the blitz, in which cities including London, Liverpool and Manchester were terrorised by German bombing raids that lasted from the autumn of 1940 to the spring of the following year, was inspired by the research he and his team did in preparation for his latest feature film. A Nigerian air raid warden, Ife (played by Benjamin Clémentine), is based on a real-life figure; Rita works with a racially diverse crew of women in the munitions factory; and Ken “Snakehips” Johnson, a gay jazz singer who performed at London’s Café De Paris, also features.

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