In the Same Breath

Nanfu Wang's 2021 documentary tells the earliest days of the coronavirus outbreak, starting in Wuhan and extending to the United States. Wang's method is comparison: showing that both countries did the same thing, managing information, and did it with different instruments. The silencing of doctors and the shifting official statements in China are documented, alongside the transformation of the pandemic into a matter of political identity in America. Wang's own position sits at the centre: born in China, living in America, she had taken her son to family near Wuhan as the outbreak began. That personal entry keeps the film from being an abstract comparison. Footage shot covertly inside hospitals is the hardest section to watch and the most valuable. Who it's for: viewers interested in records of the pandemic and in documentaries comparing how authoritarian and democratic governments manage information. Who it's not for: anyone approaching images of death and hospital wards unprepared, or who will find the frame that equates the two countries contestable.