Documentary About Northeast Queens Hospital Scores NYTimes Review

GLEN OAKS, QUEENS — As the coronavirus spread throughout Queens in March 2020, the staff at a northeast Queens hospital tried to keep the virus at bay while Matthew Heineman looked on.

Over a year later, Heineman, a documentary director, released the product of his months-long observation, titled "The First Wave."

The film, which takes place within the walls of northeast Queens' Long Island Jewish Medical Center, was reviewed by New York Times writer Teo Bugbee as a "harrowing" portrait of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

"Heineman doesn’t include talking heads to contextualize the images that are presented, preferring to allow doctors and nurses to explain the chaos surrounding them," she says, explaining that the film includes bedside shots of dying patients and the doctors trying to rescue them.

"This is not a comprehensive portrait of diagnostics, treatment plans or even the political circumstances that produced such a deadly first surge," she explains, instead describing the documentary as an "on-the-ground view of what it felt like to be inside a hospital in the spring of 2020."

And, as Bugbee points out, the "antagonizing" film is extremely challenging to watch, especially since the pandemic is still ongoing.

Read the full NYTimes review here.