Weeks before the U.S. saw its surge in COVID-19 cases, overcrowded hospitals in Italy offered a grim warning of the chaos that can result when governments don’t successfully contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Filmmaker Sasha Joelle Achilli witnessed that country's crisis firsthand, and joined Boston Public Radio Tuesday to discuss her new documentary for FRONTLINE, titled “Inside Italy’s COVID War."
The film follows Dr. Francesca Mangiatordi as she works to treat the overwhelming number of COVID-19 patients in her northern Italian hospital, all while trying to retain a degree of normalcy with her husband and two kids at home.
“Every ward in the hospital– so you had orthopedics, gynecology, cardiology, urology... had become COVID wards,” Achilli said. “All of a sudden, you had cardiologists who became pulmonary experts, because they couldn’t — they weren’t admitting normal cases anymore. Anyone who had some other kind of illness had to be transferred to a completely different hospital.”
Achilli explained that she found Mangiatordi through a viral photo posted online, of a nurse collapsed across her keyboard. The black and white image had been captured by Mangiatordi, who Achilli was then able to contact through social media.
"I found her on Facebook and within a few hours we were on the phone, talking to each other, and she said ‘my doors are open — come. I want to show you what we’re going through,” she said. "Within four days, I was flying home — I was flying to Italy.”
Achilli, who was born and raised in northern Italy, said the experience of producing and directing the film felt "really personal.”
"I felt like I wanted to be [in Italy] because, although I couldn’t see my family, I felt like I was closer to them by doing that in a way,” she said.
