2020 Movie
Dir. Hao Wu & Weixi Chen · China, United States of America · Mandarin
An urgent plea for empathy told through the initial, frantic outbreak of COVID in Wuhan
Focusing on the personal over the global, 76 Days serves as a valuable reminder for generations to come, of the catastrophic human cost of a pandemic. The film’s directors (including one or more filmmakers who have had to keep themselves anonymous) take an entirely boots-on-the-ground approach in Wuhan, China. Together they find both humanity and the loss of humanity in these individual cases of COVID that are stalled by small inconveniences or a general lack of understanding of the disease. And all of this confusion is punctuated by the humbling fact that we never see the nurses’ faces. It’s a harrowing watch, but it tells us everything we need to know about how much assistance our health workers need and the kind of superhuman things they’re tasked with doing every single day.
Raw and intimate, this documentary captures the struggles of patients and frontline medical professionals battling the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan.
"A vital film of historical significance."
— Weiting Liu
"The film's value to future generations is self-evident, but it has just as much to show us in the here and now about the history we're making alone and together."
— David Ehrlich
Emil Hofileña is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. He also writes as a theater critic, with work published in Rogue and Out of Print, among others. He’s probably crying over a movie or an episode as we speak.
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