The co-director of the haunting documentary, filmed inside the city’s hospitals during the first outbreak, explains why it is so important
In the opening scene of 76 Days, the extraordinary inside story of how Wuhan’s hospitals coped with the initial wave of Covid, a sobbing daughter in full PPE begs to see her dying father. The staff refuse and restrain her. Soon after, she pursues her father’s body bag on to the street, only to watch as it is driven away. The woman crumples in the road, distraught and bereft.
Such harrowing partings have since been replicated hundreds of thousands of times the world over. Yet 76 Days derives incredible strength from being a chronicle of the first outbreak. It is a journey into the unknown. The intensive care unit is full of people infected with an unidentified plague. Overwhelmed nurses bolt the doors to a ward as scores of older patients shuffle in the cold on the landing, begging to be admitted.