‘Wuhan Days and Nights’: China premieres film a year after first Covid-19 lockdown

The documentary captures Wuhan's empty streets and tearful scenes inside hospitals

A woman cycles past the closed Huanan Seafood wholesale market in Wuhan on January 23, one year after the city went into lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus. AFP

A year after Wuhan’s coronavirus lockdown, China has premiered a documentary film to mark the anniversary and continue the government’s efforts to cast its Covid-19 response in a positive light.

Titled Days and Nights in Wuhan, the film opened to the public exactly a year after Wuhan went into an unexpected 76-day lockdown in the early hours of January 23, 2020.

A co-production between Chinese state media and the Hubei Propaganda Department, the film was released in theatres around the country. In Beijing, small numbers of viewers gathered to watch the premiere.

“I wanted to learn how China got through the hardship,” said a woman surnamed Li, 32, who was one of the first people to see the film in Beijing. “We’ve been through a year of struggle and hard work, and now there are new cases in many places.”

Scenes from Days and Nights in Wuhan include shots of empty streets, as well as tearful moments inside Wuhan's hospitals as medical staff tended to patients.

“It is using life to record life, and create a heroic hymn of the people,” said a state media article posted on the Wuhan government website, following an early viewing for medical workers in the city Wuhan.

State media have described the film as the first major documentary on China’s outbreak.

The capital of China's Hubei province, Wuhan is believed to be the epicentre of the global pandemic that has spread around the world over the last year. It has since infected about 100 million people and killed more than two million people so far.

In China, strict control measures from the beginning of 2020 have allowed Wuhan to return to normal, but the government's early response drew widespread public criticism. This includes the outpouring of public anger and grief over the death of a Chinese doctor who had been reprimanded for issuing an early warning about Covid-19. He died after contracting the virus from one of his patients.

Dozens of patriotic documentaries have been released by local propaganda authorities and government-backed media on China’s Covid-19 outbreak, evoking wartime analogies to describe the actions of medical workers and policymakers, including President Xi Jinping.

The film’s release comes as China faces a new wave of infections after months of containing the virus. Authorities are discouraging travel during the Lunar New Year holiday in February and have begun to impose fresh lockdowns in some cities.

Wuhan has officially recorded 46,483 cases of the disease and 3,869 deaths.