Best of Fest Encores
Documentary Competition - Winner
The Winner in the 2021 MSPIFF Documentary Competition is Wuhan Wuhan, directed by Yung Chang. In documenting the impact of a soul-crushing global health crisis through the daily turmoil of a metropolitan hospital in Wuhan, China, Wuhan Wuhan exudes the deepest humanity and empathy. The protagonists, separated from home and family and toiling long hours amidst the ongoing trauma of loss, are committed to not only saving lives but, in one case, bringing one into the world. Wuhan Wuhan is both an elegy to those we lost and an homage to those who persevered.
Your ticket includes a recorded Filmmaker Q&A following the film.
Following a group of citizens of Wuhan in the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Yung Chang’s compassionate documentary examines what it means to be human in the face of overwhelming disaster. Chang follows his subjects over February and March last year as they grapple with a virus unseen previously in human history: an ER doctor whose conscience often overwhelms him; a tough ICU nurse; a volunteer psychologist wrestling with the grief that this catastrophe has wrought; a fierce mother and her son, both COVID-19 patients, trying their best to endure and navigate the country’s health care system; and a volunteer driver for medical workers and his wife who is on the verge of giving birth to their baby. Like Camus’ The Plague, Wuhan Wuhan is a shining cinematic testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Director Biography
Born 1977 is Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, Yung Chang feature documentaries Up the Yangtze (2007), China Heavyweight (2012), The Fruit Hunters (2012), and This is Not a Movie (2019).
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