On January 23rd, 2020, China locked down Wuhan, a city of 11 million, to combat the emerging COVID-19 outbreak. Set deep inside the frontlines of the crisis in four hospitals, 76 DAYS is directed by the brilliant filmmaker, Hao Wu. It tells indelible human stories at the centre of this pandemic — from a woman begging in vain to bid a final farewell to her father, a grandpa with dementia searching for his way home, to a couple anxious to meet their newborn, and a nurse determined to return personal items to families of the deceased. These raw and intimate stories bear witness to the death and rebirth of a city under a 76-day lockdown, and to the human resilience that persists in times of profound tragedy.
Could you tell us a little bit about the story of the film?
I flew back to Shanghai from New York for Chinese New Year on January 23rd, the day China imposed a complete lockdown on Wuhan to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. I boarded the flight alone with a heavy heart. We had planned a trip for our family of four, so my parents — both of whom had recently had cancer surgeries — could spend some precious holiday time with their two grandkids who lived so far away. Six hours before the flight, my spouse and I cancelled the tickets for him and the kids, as Wuhan was locking down. We reached that decision after much agonising — is the outbreak really contained in Wuhan, or is the government lying thus unsafe for us to travel with children? And how could the government conceivably lie again about any outbreak after its disastrous response to the SARS epidemic in 2003?
I spent the holiday with my parents and my sister’s family in Shanghai in confusion, and increasingly, in anger. Shanghai was far from Wuhan, but a panic was setting in all over China. Everyone locked themselves in and forewent the typical festive family get-togethers during China’s biggest holiday. Shanghai, China’s largest city, appeared like the film set of a zombie apocalypse movie. I wondered if my parents would ever be able to see my kids again. And I spent many hours scrolling through social media to comprehend what had happened and was still happening in Wuhan. It became increasingly clear that the local government had lied and suppressed whistleblowers to conceal the outbreak. It also became apparent that the situation was dire in Wuhan — people were dying, hospitals were overwhelmed, and medical personnel did not have adequate protection so they were getting sick and dying too.
The country was angry. I was angry. I flew back to New York before the U.S. closed off air traffic from China. I grew angrier still when my grandpa was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer soon after Chinese New Year, and passed away a month later. I was unable to say goodbye to him in person because by that time, China had begun restricting inbound travel. So, when a U.S. network approached me to make a feature documentary about the evolving pandemic, I jumped on. Normally I shy away from newsy topics, because I always wonder if my filmmaking can add anything meaningful beyond what has already been covered in the news media. But COVID-19 is personal. I began researching how to expose the Chinese government’s wrongdoings, to reveal the source of this immense human tragedy that was spreading globally as a pandemic. I reached out to filmmakers who were filming on the ground in Wuhan. After speaking to over a dozen, I found my two co-directors whose footage, with unprecedented access to the frontline, shook me.
Soon we began collaborating over China’s Great Firewall, sharing daily rushes over the cloud and discussing which characters to follow and what new story angles to explore. I was so moved by the stories they were uncovering that I made plans to have myself smuggled into Wuhan to bear witness first-hand.
Then the pandemic reached New York. I gave up the plan to go to Wuhan and started filming in New York instead. My spouse took our kids down to Atlanta to stay with his parents because it was too dangerous with me going in and out of the house every day. I was alone in New York with my camera and the desolate scenes disoriented me. I felt as if I was reliving the Wuhan stories all over again in America — underprepared government, lying or scientifically ignorant politicians, scared residents, and exhausted doctors and nurses with no protective equipment. It shocked me even more, this second time around, because America supposedly had a top-notch public health infrastructure and a far-superior political system.
Then the geo-political fights began, and the finger pointing between the US and China reached a fever pitch. Anti-Asian racism reared its ugly head globally. Even in New York, the most diverse American city, I got yelled at for walking in the street. I felt unsafe, not just from the virus but also from human prejudice and ignorance. I read books about the Black Death, about the Spanish Flu, about the AIDS epidemic. It dawned on me that a pandemic would bring the worst out of us. It always did and it always will, because fear and human short-sightedness blind us. Yet there is also always hope. Even in the darkest hour in Wuhan there were ample evidence of human perseverance, of human kindness, which was being replayed all over the world — the singalongs in Italy, the daily cheering for medics in New York, the self-organised volunteers in Madrid, and the numerous doctors and nurses who risk their own lives to save the stricken.
Reality, however, managed to dash hope on a personal level — by late March, China had tightened its control over any COVID narrative so much that both of my co-directors stopped collaborating with me. Soon after, the US network dropped the project I was working on because China was no longer the only focus of the pandemic. I drove down to Atlanta to be with my family. Quarantined for fourteen days at first in a suburban basement with nothing to do, I started playing with the footage my co-directors had shared with me. It made me cry, and it reminded me that I needed to tell a story about hope, about the human experience living through a common tragedy, about our shared humanity in this divided and scared world, in order to survive this pandemic myself. So I edited. Once I finished my first rough cut, I shared it with my co-directors. I told them — this is the film I’d like to make, can I license the footage from you to finish it? I know there may be risks for you since you are not supposed to be working with any party not sanctioned by the government, but I know this is the story you’d like to tell as well. I know that because how I edited was exactly how you captured the stories – raw, intimate, and deeply human. Will you give me permission to share these stories with the world? They did, eventually, for which I’m immensely grateful.
Where and when was the film shot?
Production started in Wuhan in February 2020, soon after the lockdown on Wuhan began, at four different hospitals. It continued through the gradual return of order and ended after the lockdown was officially lifted on April 8.
How did your co-directors get such incredible access?
My two co-directors are reporters who were sent to cover the outbreak in Wuhan. During the lockdown, the Chinese government restricted access to hospitals to only patients, medical professionals and reporters. A few of the hardest-hit hospitals only allowed reporters and filming crews thoroughly vetted by the authorities. But that strict control was not applied uniformly to all hospitals or throughout the entire lockdown period. Early in the lockdown, when the situation was dire and chaotic, and there was a severe shortage of medical supplies, many hospitals actually welcomed media exposure to help them look for help. Some of the medical teams sent from elsewhere in China to support Wuhan were also open to being filmed, partly due to their desire to have their own images documented in this historical moment.
Why is one of the co-directors credited as ‘Anonymous’?
‘Anonymous’ is a Chinese reporter, who is also a first-time filmmaker. Due to the sensitivity around any COVID-19 narrative in China, he would like to remain anonymous to avoid attracting attention.
What was it like for your co-directors to film on the frontline?
I have huge admiration for my co-directors who risked their own lives to film in the hospitals, especially when the danger of the coronavirus was little understood in the early days of the Wuhan lockdown. Just like the healthcare workers in this film, my co-directors had to put on heavy Personal Protective Equipment every day, which was very uncomfortable to wear, was hard to breathe in and made them feel sick at times. And once they were in the contamination zone, they had to stay there for hours at a time, with no bathroom breaks, just as the doctors and nurses. Every night after filming they would go through a thorough disinfection ritual and go back to rest alone in hotels reserved for front-line workers. Their existence during the lockdown was an exhausting one, both physically and emotionally.
As this crisis was unfolding, how did you decide on where to concentrate?
The film really came together during editing. In production there were many discussions about what aspects of Wuhan’s city life to cover, and whether and how much to contrast the Wuhan stories with the increasingly global pandemic stories. Once I started editing, however, I quickly realised that the strongest footage was that shot in the hospitals. And since the worldwide media were already reporting extensively on the chronology of the pandemic’s evolution, I decided to tell our story in the barest fashion possible, to focus on the individual experiences and forego any illustration of the bigger environment that these personal stories happen in.
Has your outlook on this subject changed in any way as you were making the film?
My own feeling towards the pandemic has evolved from a starting point of fear, anger and wanting to assign blame, to one seeking to understand the universal human conditions in times of crisis. As much as I have been horrified by the human toll of this pandemic and the failures of different societies to mount a cohesive and effective defense, I have also been encouraged by the ample evidence of human tenacity and kindness.