The First Wave

Matthew Heineman's documentary was shot inside the intensive care unit of a New York hospital during the first four months of the pandemic. The camera is in the corridors, present at intubations, beside patients, and the nurses, the doctors and phone calls to families are the principal material. As in his earlier work there is no narrator and almost no music. The hardest passages are not the recoveries but the decisions: who gets which bed, what is said to whose family. The street protests that began in the same period enter the film as well, so two crises meet in one city. It stands as a primary record of the period. Who it is for: viewers who want observational documentary and a first-hand record of the pandemic. Who it is not for: anyone who needs distance from hospital scenes and from the moment of death.