Metacritic reviews

A stirring testament to the necessity of empathy for surviving with any kind of dignity in a particularly undignified time.

While at times a brutal watch, with the film’s insistence on showing the ravages of COVID-19 in up-close detail, 76 Days will, I suspect, become a landmark document when talking about the virus and China’s initial response.

The camerawork and editing are extraordinary in their immediacy and their sensitivity to chaos, exhaustion and resilience — often all at once.

It manages in a concise and remarkable way to illustrate not only the ravages of this new virus but how its effects continue to resonate no matter the political forces looking to downplay its risks.

Shaggy and slapped together as it may be, “76 Days” is an urgent act of witnessing for a world that only tends to see itself clearly in hindsight; the film’s value to future generations is self-evident, but it has just as much to show us in the here and now about the history we’re making alone and together.

76 Days is not a hard-hitting documentary about the centre of the Covid-19 pandemic – maybe such a film will be slower to arrive than the vaccine – but it’s a potent human-interest story, and a portrait of a city under siege.

What comes across strongest is the sheer uncertainty gripping both the caregivers and the infected — no one has experienced anything like this, and no one knows what could happen next.

76 Days is unvarnished and raw, a first draft of a history that’s still being written.

At times, we might be watching a deadpan workplace comedy; that it’s possible to laugh at this subject matter at all is a testament to its matter-of-fact presentation and maybe also to the extent that this virus has completely seeped into every corner of life.

At times, this cinema-vérité approach results in a claustrophobic and engrossing viewing experience. But its construction also frequently, and curiously, lacks urgency, and the few characters the filmmakers keep returning to never quite stick.