[imagesource:here]

The devastating images and videos that came out of Italy, one of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic, acted as a warning to the rest of the world that if the coronavirus was not contained, it would ravage thousands of people, drain resources, and bring cities to a standstill.

Now that the country is slowly edging its way out the worst of the crisis, people are returning to post-shutdown life, but it looks very different from before. 

As PBS notes, much of the suffering that took place, happened behind the scenes in hospitals closed to visitors, “where doctors and nurses try to save the lives of patients…without contracting the highly infectious disease themselves”.

Award-winning filmmaker Sasha Joelle Achilli returned to Italy to document the fight against the virus in a no holds barred documentary.

Inside Italy’s COVID War, filmed inside Cremona Hospital at the height of Italy’s coronavirus crisis, follows senior ER doctor Francesca Mangiatordi, her staff and their patients as they battle COVID-19 in a region that’s at the epicentre of the country’s outbreak.

…Through [Achilli’s] lens, we watch as the volume of coronavirus cases becomes unmanageable, as Dr. Mangiatordi and her colleagues are forced to make life-and-death decisions about who to admit, and as younger and younger patients fall ill.

From an 18-year-old boy who is intubated and fighting for his life, to a nurse who sings to patients on ventilators in an attempt to comfort them, to a 30-year-old mother of three young girls who begs a nurse to tell her the truth about her odds, this is a truly rare and special documentary that reveals unforgettable moments from inside a hospital on the front lines of a pandemic.

The following clips give you a glimpse of what you can expect from the full documentary:

You can watch Inside Italy’s COVID War, in full, here:

[source:pbs]