Two new documentaries vividly capture the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic for health care workers in Wuhan, China, centering the narrative of the pandemic around their experiences.
The film highlights how nationalism prompted several leaders to delay implementing measures, which allowed some to minimize the threat of the disease and enabled conspiracy theories to spread.
76 Days, available to rent on Apple TV+ and elsewhere, does not directly reference how the Chinese government initially suppressed vital information as the virus spread, but the film still manages to counter the government’s narrative. (It’s no coincidence that one of the co-directors is credited simply as “anonymous.”)
Bravely shot in four of Wuhan’s hospitals during the early height of the then-unprecedented lockdown, named directors Hao Wu and Weixi Chen focus on daily life for the medics in the midst of the first wave of the outbreak, illustrating the human cost of a virus that has often been depicted only in terms of its grim statistics.
76 Days captures harrowing moments, from the traumatic reaction of one worker as a deceased patient is wheeled out of the ICU, to a lingering shot of a phone belonging to another deceased patient, focusing on the thirty-one unread text messages that will never be answered.
The filmmakers, for the most part, refrain from sensationalism, following medical workers and the operational functions of the city’s hospitals as they begin to adapt to the overwhelming pressures of the pandemic. The fact that many involved in the production had to remain anonymous isn’t due to any particularly damning insights the film offers, but rather is a reflection of how several citizen journalists who contradicted official Chinese Communist Party statements on the control of the virus were declared missing during this period.
The way China’s state media spun the initial outbreak adds context to scenes of patients wandering around restricted hospital areas unmasked. The film highlights how nationalism prompted several leaders to delay implementing measures, which allowed some to minimize the threat of the disease and enabled conspiracy theories to spread.
76 Days makes a grounded companion piece to Nanfu Wang’s documentary In the Same Breath, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in late January and will be available to stream on HBO Max later this year. Wang’s film directly tackles the relationship between authoritarian nationalism and a public health crisis, again managing to get access to Wuhan’s hospital wards in order to counter the government narrative. Her essay-style structure keeps returning to her own experience, visiting family in China and hearing a news report about eight people being arrested for spreading disinformation on a pneumonia-adjacent disease. (In the three weeks that followed, officials went from insisting it couldn’t be spread by human-to-human contact, to belatedly locking down a city of eleven million where cases had been springing up for more than a month.)
In the hospital wards, Wang’s crews find state media cameramen who have been deployed to depict health care workers in a patriotic light, with strict instructions to only film them in situations that highlight the virus being under control—showing health care workers once again used as political pawns.
On-the-ground footage highlights medics stretched to a breaking point, as the lack of early preventative measures forces them to turn patients away. These same horror stories about the lack of pandemic preparedness are echoed the world over; Wang shows U.S. nurses protesting about inadequate PPE just days before cases spiralled in New York City, and governmental claims minimizing the need to worry about the virus’ spread, further endangering those on the front line.
76 Days and In the Same Breath are among the first major documentaries capturing the COVID-19 crisis. But they’re remarkable beyond this; as political leaders pay lip service to health care workers while taking credit for their efforts, both films highlight the struggles of those on the front lines of fighting the disease. Both films are exceptional pieces of cinematic journalism, based on the experiences of those on the ground.