ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR
ACCORDING TO
PRESS
“Essential viewing.”
— Geoff Berkshire, Los Angeles Times
“a riveting documentary… [An] astonishingly candid and deeply wrenching portrait of death, suffering and compassion.”
— Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
Critic’s pick
“defined more by the human capacity for resilience and compassion than by a relentless sense of doom… ‘76 days’ suggests a way to face the future, with tears but perhaps also hope.”
— Nicolas Rapold, The New York Times
“the first essential COVID-19 doc…
‘76 Days’ didn’t even need to be as good as it is: That it’s so artfully and elegantly observed, and packs such a candid wallop of feeling, atop its frontline urgency is testament to the grace and sensitivity of its directorial team, not just their timely savvy.”
— Guy Lodge, Variety
“[A] remarkable front-line report… An emotional-wringer… A work of true direct cinema… The camerawork and editing are extraordinary in their immediacy and their sensitivity to chaos, exhaustion and resilience — often all at once. There's tenderness too, and awe.”
— Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter
★★★★☆
“Haunting … A chilling look at what frontline workers faced in Wuhan... A potent human-interest story, and a portrait of a city under siege.”
— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“One of the best I saw via Toronto… a tough, very good Chinese documentary about the first months of the pandemic in Wuhan.”
— Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“A startling picture. Immersive... The film couldn’t be timelier... Future generations may consider 76 Days a historical document of what 2020 felt like… The intimacy of what we see is sometimes striking.”
— Tim Grierson, Screen International
One of “20 Must-See Films at the 2020 Venice, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals”
“There will be many documentaries about this ongoing epidemic, but few are poised to offer such a lucid and lingering view of the toll the virus has taken.”
— David Ehrlich, IndieWire
“unvarnished and raw, a first draft of a history that’s still being written… required viewing… a tribute to the heroic efforts of the workers it follows."
— David Sims, The Atlantic
“Talk about you-are-there cinema… Harrowing doesn’t even come close to describing some of the more intense sequences in here… an invaluable look at the early days of a global catastrophe.”
— David Fear, Rolling Stone
“76 Days will surely be remembered as one of the gutsiest, best, and, oddly, most hopeful [COVID-19 documentaries]... funny and heart-racing, heartbreaking and humanizing… It’s a massive project… an invaluable record of this moment.”
— Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
“Harrowing… Pulse-spiking… The images it captures [look] as if they were lifted from a dystopian thriller… By centering the human emotion within this hospital, 76 Days finds a focus amid the cacophony of a story that is almost too big to tell.”
— Kevin Fallon, The Daily Beast
“A great movie... Terribly powerful and harrowing… It’s an incredibly well-made movie… So many human dramas… so frighteningly real. A necessary watch.”
— Peter Rainer, KPCC Radio
GRADE: A
“a tight, tense, and, at times, unrelentingly emotional account of front-line pandemic medical combat… As an account of what the pandemic was like at our current pandemic’s Ground Zero, it feels like essential viewing for now and the future… A stirring testament to the necessity of empathy for surviving with any kind of dignity in a particularly undignified time.”
— Chris Barsanti, The Playlist
“Honest and captivating… Captures the fear, heartbreak, and resilience the city showed during their quarantine… An inspiring profile of doctors practicing courage under fire.”
— Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
“A big story told in tiny moments… Raw and intimate… What hits hardest and lingers longest about this movie are not the big ups and downs, but the tiny details.”
— Angie Han, Mashable
One of the “Top Picks for the
2020 Toronto International Film Festival”
“A cogent diary of the COVID-19 crisis… Wu co-signs a piece of art that is already one of the most important documents of the pandemic.”
— Serena Scateni, Hyperallergic
“[An] electric and powerful film… both shattering and hopeful in equal measure… A beautifully balanced look at not only the horror of the circumstances but also about how easily this onslaught of awful can become routine and predictable. The unvarnished, direct cinematic approach is naturally elevated by the life-or-death situation, but it’s not to be underappreciated the journalistic craft and cinematic sensibilities… This film can stand as a unique, vital, must-see.”
— Jason Gorber, Slash Film
GRADE: A-
“A profound, heartbreaking work of documentary vérité... A profoundly visceral look into how one hospital dealt with the raging virus… It’s a staggering work that values immediacy… all the more remarkable for its access... 76 Days will, I suspect, become a landmark document when talking about the virus and China’s initial response.”
— Christian Gallichio, The Film Stage