Sundance review: 'In the Same Breath' is a searing look at how China applied propaganda to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic

‘In the Same Breath’

★★★1/2

Appearing in the Premieres section of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Can be streamed through the festival digital portal on Saturday, January 30. Running time: 95 minutes; in English, and in Chinese with subtitles.

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Even moviegoers experiencing “COVID fatigue” will be awakened to anger by director Nanfu Wang’s “In the Same Breath,” a chilling and necessary look at how the Chinese government buried its botched response to the coronavirus under a mountain of propaganda.

Wang grew up in a city just 200 miles away from Wuhan, the bustling city where the virus was first discovered. So, for her, this is personal — and she makes a shattering personal film, in which she dissects the patterns of China’s propaganda, patterns she knows well when researching her 2019 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner “One Child Nation.”

Through screen grabs from Chinese social media, posts deleted almost as soon as they were put up, Wang shows the on-the-ground reality of the virus’ spread that the government’s optimistic news reports and lofty rhetoric tried to hide. She also has video, shot by local videographers she knew back home, showing the crowded conditions in Chinese hospitals — a preview of what Americans’ would see just a couple of months later.

As disturbing as it is to have one’s future predicted like that, what’s more troubling is Wang’s observation that the early pronouncements from the Trump administration matched the Chinese model — underplay the spread, ignore the data, and threaten anyone who says things are as bad as they are — just two months later. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, considered the lone voice of truth among Trump’s coronavirus experts, is shown here trying to reassure Americans back in March that they didn’t need to use face masks.

Wang carefully, yet forcefully, presents the evidence of the costs of inaction against the virus — while also arguing that authoritarian tendencies, seen from China’s Communist Party and from Trump’s rhetoric, can be an even more insidious killer than COVID-19.