Think of filmmaker Nanfu Wang’s new documentary, In the Same Breath, as another resource for understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic was allowed to rage out of control from China’s first received cases in 2019 to now. Don’t let it be your only resource, though. That would defeat the purpose of the exercise and clang against Wang’s intention. “Watch another documentary,” Wang suggests in a conversation with Mic. “Watch two more! Read a book. Go read more reports.” For Wang, there is no such thing as too much information on a circumstance as knotty as the pandemic, especially given the amount of misinformation that’s been floating out there since the beginning.
Most of us remember where we were when the first stay-at-home orders and advisories were issued here in the U.S. Wang was on a flight back to America from her hometown, which is just 200 miles outside of Wuhan, the pandemic’s ground zero. Wang returns to China annually to celebrate Chinese New Year; in January 2020, she left early to head to the Sundance Film Festival, and her husband and their 3-year-old son stayed behind. On January 23, China shut Wuhan down, and Wang scrambled to get both of them back Stateside. For everyone, the pandemic has been personal. For Wang, it’s an intersection of the personal with the political. As a result In the Same Breath is less about the virus itself than how the Chinese government downplayed its severity.
