The Oscar-winning film director Steve McQueen is to finally show his unflinching film of the burnt-out ruin of Grenfell Tower, which he hopes will help the push for justice before the sixth anniversary of the disaster.
The 24-minute film, Grenfell, was shot from a helicopter in December 2017, shortly before the charred tower in west London was wrapped in white plastic. Without words or music, McQueen’s camera relentlessly circles the council block, often at close quarters, allowing viewers to see into rooms where people died and white-suited forensic investigators sifting evidence.
The project, which has involved extensive consultation with the bereaved, survivors and neighbours, comes as the community waits for the findings of the public inquiry – which started almost five years ago – and to hear whether police will recommend criminal prosecutions that may bring about the jail terms many want.
“You must understand that the violence that was inflicted on that community was no joke,” McQueen said in an exclusive Guardian interview before the film is exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery, London, from 7 April to 10 May. “I didn’t want to let people off the hook. There are going to be people who are going to be a little bit disturbed. When you make art, anything half decent … there are certain people you will possibly offend. But that is how it is.”
The film can be harrowing. Its repetitive contemplation of the burnt-out block simmers with unspoken rage. It is also a politically charged reminder of the extreme destruction that still sits within the shrouded block while no person, nor company, has been punished for their role in the 72 deaths.
The film begins high above suburban fields, woodlands, sports pitches and avenues of interwar housing.
“I wanted to put the building in perspective of our everyday [life],” McQueen said. “It’s not isolated. That is important because you [the viewer] put it in the perspective of yourself.”
McQueen “sat on” the film after it was shot because “it couldn’t have been shown within three or four years [of the disaster].” But still not everyone will want to see it. One person whose relative died on an upper floor said they would not watch the whole film but supported its public display.
“It’s more for them to see [Grenfell] standing there, the way it is with the world going on around it,” they said.
Ed Daffarn, who escaped from his 16th-floor flat, said: “Sitting there looking at [the tower] captured the pure violence of what was meted out to us by the perpetrators. It has come at a good time. We need Grenfell in the public consciousness.”
McQueen grew up in his early years on the nearby White City estate and said he felt compelled to make the film as soon as he heard that officials planned to wrap the tower in the months after the 14 June 2017 blaze.
“It was almost like a race against time,” he said. “Once things are covered up, they are forgotten about, or it can be more convenient for people who want it to be forgotten about.”
He engaged community groups, including Grenfell United, and dropped leaflets through letterboxes. Some people were not yet ready to back his proposal, but they kept talking.
Eventually he took off in a helicopter from the north-west and flew towards the tower, directing the whole piece in a single shot.
Only birdsong, wind, cars and an aeroplane are heard. An emergency services siren breaks the peace, before the central London skyline appears. It is like poring over a map – a satisfying survey of an impressive civilisation. Then the charcoal black lattice of Grenfell appears and the soundtrack cuts to silence and the camera circles the tower for minute after minute. It is haunting and upsetting.
“It’s about the building and suspending it in time,” McQueen said. “And looking. Holding, holding, holding.”
Scraps of the cladding panels that burned like petrol are visible. Beams of sunlight hit the internal floors. In one flat sits a bathtub. Stacked in many flats are pink sacks filled with unidentified material. Absolute destruction fills the frame.
It is not a direct comparison, but McQueen brings up the decision made by Emmett Till’s mother that her 14-year-old son’s body should be displayed in an open casket, after he was lynched by racists in Mississippi in 1955. Mamie Till said “everybody needed to know what had happened”.
McQueen is certain of the causes of the Grenfell disaster.
“It was deliberate neglect,” he said. “It was no accident. There were so many people, so many companies, so many factors … It was all a deliberate act of neglect and, to a certain extent, greed.”
And the racial dynamic of what had happened to the majority ethnic minority people in the tower was immediately obvious him.
“You know the lay of the land, you know what the authorities are,” he said. “They are in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. People talk about what happened in [1959] when Kelso Cochrane, from Antigua, was murdered by the teddy boys [in the borough].”
The film comes as negotiations continue about what to do with the tower. Parts of the community are keen to keep at least some of the building as a reminder of the disaster and because it is effectively a burial ground. Others would prefer it to be demolished and replaced with a memorial such as a garden or museum. The film may prompt fresh appraisals of that dilemma.
Grenfell is just the latest of McQueen’s projects exploring festering injustices, from his Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave (2013) through to his Small Axe films (2020) for the BBC about the experience of London’s Caribbean immigrants. And he’s not going to get tired and stop.
“Tired? Oh my God no. It’s the reverse. It gives me energy. Justice gives me energy. Truth gives me energy … It needs to be shouted from the highest rooftops.”
