Film review: Wuhan Wuhan focuses on the humanity at the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak
Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang’s gently paced documentary, now streaming at DOXA, avoids sensationalism
Health-care workers in Wuhan a few months after the 2020 lockdown.
DOXA Documentary Film Festival streams Wuhan Wuhan until May 16
IN AN ESPECIALLY touching moment in Wuhan Wuhan, Yung Chang’s documentary that begins two months into lockdown last year amid the COVID-19 outbreak in its namesake city, medical workers take pictures of each other outdoors as breeze blows their hair around. Once they’re back inside the hospital, having donned personal protective equipment from head to toe—with their eyes, behind goggles, being the only part of their bodies that’s visible—they each tape their headshot to their chest. It’s so that their patients can see what they really look like and feel closer to them.
This thoughtful gesture is among so many acts of kindness captured in the feature-length documentary now showing at DOXA. Oshawa-born Oscar member Chang (Up the Yangtze) and his crew (including producers Donna Gigliotti and Diane Quon) travelled to the Hubei province during the first unfathomable wave, getting day-to-day footage of life in overflowing hospitals and in an expectant couple’s small apartment. In one scene, a health-care worker tells the camera that the crew might want to find somewhere else to shoot, since the density of the virus was highest right where they were standing.
Wuhan Wuhan moves at a gentle pace and takes an equally measured approach to the fraught topic. Yes, some of the patients we meet are very sick; we hear from some who are terrified, in tears, or certain that death is nigh. But the subject is never sensationalized; rather, what emerges is shared humanity.
Yin, a volunteer medical driver who puts himself at risk every single time he chauffeurs a health-care worker, cooks stir-fired rice for his pregnant wife, nourishing her back to health after being ill. An exhausted ER doctor admits asking a dear colleague to take care of his child if he doesn’t make it. Volunteer psychologists gather in a group circle to help each other cope with depression and to encourage each other through. Dancing breaks out in a temporary health-care facility.
Wuhan Wuhan doesn’t fixate on the fear, loss, or panic at the epicentre of COVID-19; it focuses on the heart.
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