“76 days”
76 Days, which follows exhausted doctors and nurses in Wuhan, China, who suffer to deal with the world’s first deadly outbreak of the new coronavirus, will be eagerly awaited at the Toronto Film Festival, as it is the Zero documentary on the first floor of COVID-19 in which to triumph. cinemas.
The irony is that the ongoing global pandemic will prevent New York-based co-director Hao Wu from physically attending the world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on September 14 of his documentary on the 76-day closure of COVID-19 in Wuhan last year. January to early January. It’s April.
“We were very happy to hear Toronto choose our film, but now we are disappointed that we cannot pass in person,” Wu told The Hollywood Reporter.
And the new Coronavirus, which eventually spread from Wuhan to New York, also prevented Wu from joining its co-directors, videojournalist Weixi Chen and some other local journalist seeking to remain anonymous to protect his identity, as they joined four submerged. Wuhan hospitalizes the lockout of that city.
“I made the decision to stay in New York and edit the film,” Wu says. For his co-directors, taking photographs for 76 days at Wuhan’s lockdown was emotionally exhausting and physically dangerous.
The documentary features Wuhan doctors and nurses unrecognizable to their patients and the film while wearing non-public head-to-toe protective devices, adding dangerous fabrics, protective suits, gloves, mask and visors.
Wu’s co-directors were also covered in disposable robes, aprons and masks to prevent infection while following Wuhan’s medical staff with their cameras. “My anonymous co-director told me I could die because he thought I had COVID-19. and it turned out to be negative, but we still don’t know if the check is valid,” Wu said.
With medical personnel covered in non-public protective devices (PPE) and their eyes noticed only fogged glasses, Wu knew he could not make a film aimed at characters like his former People’s Republic of Desire, enthusiasts from China’s online streaming sites, and All-In-Family Netflix, which features intimate photographs of Wu’s parents and sister when they are informed that he is gay to his family.
“I knew that from the beginning of 76 Days, it would be difficult for the audience to stick to the characters,” Wu recalls. Therefore, the documentary focuses less on identifying the main and secondary characters as doctors and nurses run between beds to save lives, and more about using emotional stories to drive the narrative forward. This includes the opening scene in which a young woman pleads to say goodbye to her father while her new corpse in a frame bag is pulled from an intensive care unit; a grandparent with dementia who helps keep getting out of bed from the hospital and going home; a couple concerned about meeting their newborn and a nurse who wants to return non-public parts to the families of the deceased.
During the closure of Wuhan, foreign television networks showed photographs of local smartphones of COVID patients queuing outdoors in hospitals and care that is not easy to save lives. 76 Days shows for the first time what happened to those Wuhan citizens when they entered hospitals where extensive care is provided. were taken to the breaking point.
“The emotional rhythm of individual stories is very different, so I hope my audience can distinguish the characters by using the sound of their voices than from their physical gestures,” Wu insists.
76 Days also takes the audience to Wuhan, a city of 11 million other people little known outside China before being placed at the world highlight while stopping at a frontline war opposed to the new coronavirus.
Wu says his goal was to go beyond Wuhan’s deceptive foreign media policy and his 76-day lockdown to deliver stories of excessive distress, but at the end of human resilience and hope during a time of deep tragedy.
“Every time we hear from Wuhan, it’s an incident, or geopolitical battles and finger-pointing,” he says. Therefore, 76 days intentionally avoids a timeline of Wuhan blocking occasions, or network news clips and speaker bosses.
“We’ve been so exposed,” Wu insists. My goal was for the public to dive so that they could in fact perceive the human burden of this pandemic and a hope that can keep us up to date with the pandemic. “. “
The Chinese-American director does not see 76 days as an antidote to conspiracy theories, claiming that the new coronavirus was planted in a Wuhan lab and launched internationally as a biological weapon.
“I don’t think this film has anything to refute those conspiracy theories,” Wu says. “People will continue to believe everything they read. My goal is for the audience to focus more on how we’re treating COVID in the same way, rather than differently. My film aims to focus our power on how we can all go through the pandemic and become stronger. “
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