In the Same Breath

With Nanfu Wang in person

Dir. Nanfu Wang. 2021. 95 mins. The latest from award-winning filmmaker Nanfu Wang is an astonishing chronicle of the biggest story of our time—captured as it was happening. On the eve of 2020, thousands gathered in Wuhan to welcome the new year. Unbeknownst to them, their celebration was a perfect superspreader for the virus COVID-19. Long before the Chinese and, later, the American governments acknowledged what was happening, Wang was gathering evidence and recruiting cameramen to document the chaos and unspeakable tragedies unfolding in local hospitals and communities. Spurred by her own infant son’s imperilment on the ground in China, the U.S.-based filmmaker shines a light on both nations and their handling of the crisis, exposing a common thread of corruption and misinformation at the highest levels of government. With her films Hooligan Sparrow, I’m Another You, and One Child Nation, Wang has created a strain of nonfiction storytelling that’s entirely her own, uniting personal intimacy with a global, geopolitical scope, culminating in this extraordinary and unsparing film, which cuts deepest and spans furthest of all. Sponsored by Lismore Road Productions.