- Covid-19 is the first pandemic to be followed live by the world. The film tells them chronologically, at eye level with the development, exclusively using archive material, without comment: direct, unmediated, unfiltered.
- "Shockwaves - News from the Pandemic" assembles news, reports, talk shows, live broadcasts, video blogs. Together they form the basis for a polyphonic choir that intones the story of the pandemic, condenses it and follows it, from January 2020 to today, with a focus on Germany. A chronicle of the devastation can be seen as well as a chronicle of inner turmoil and rebellion: against the virus, against fate, against reality.
What you see is a pandemic that is only gradually spreading its full horror and is spreading to the furthest corners of society, with the world watching in real time and its eyes on the live tickers, from the first news from China to the pyre in India. All are driven, rulers and the ruled, spectators and protagonists. Decisions have to be made in the moment, in front of an audience, without a safety net or false bottom. Waves and breakwaters, masks and those who refuse to wear masks. New terms conquer everyday life, distance becomes the norm, everyday life gets a new face: in politics, in the workplace, in schools and theaters. People remain in their homes and despair. Cracks in society become visible and become deep wounds.
The pandemic as a never-ending condition As the pandemic spreads, so does knowledge about them. Research findings are circulating on the internet, scientists are becoming policy advisors, epidemiologists are predicting the curves of the next wave, and vaccines are being developed in record time. With knowledge, however, doubts about virologists and politicians also grow, and behind the doubt lurks suspicion. The longer the pandemic event lasts, the more it becomes a tough and never-ending condition. A state with the power to explode the political, economic and social systems. It is a challenge whose secret message is: after the crisis is before the crisis.
Covid-19 is the first pandemic to be followed live by the world. The film tells them chronologically, at eye level with the development, exclusively using archive material, without comment: direct, unmediated, unfiltered. He collages the events into a portrait of the present. You can see a society in times of crisis, caught up in the shock waves of the pandemic. - December 2020: The vaccine is here.December 2020: The vaccine is here. During the New Year's speech on New Year's Eve 2019, Chancellor Angela Merkel called out to her compatriots: "The 20s can be good years". On January 6, the news reported a strange lung disease in China for the first time. Probably a zoonosis, a virus that was transmitted from an animal to a human. From mid-January, the news changes. There is the first Corona case in the USA, the city of Wuhan is first sealed off, then quarantined. Images emerge that are reminiscent of a country at war: police officers patrol deserted streets, citizens are locked in apartments, there is a curfew in Wuhan and other provinces in China. Unthinkable in Europe, say the experts, and will soon be taught otherwise.
The German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, reported on television at the end of January that the matter was being taken seriously, but that people were keeping a cool head. In addition, you have to classify the disease, risk lurks around every corner. The virologist Drosten is now thoughtful: A pandemic is possible, he says on a talk show, and a vaccine is a long way off. If you look at the pictures today, they seem to be from another age. The guesswork of the experts, the doubts of the politicians, the incomprehensibility of the event. It seems too big and challenging too much, threatening normality too much and marking the end of a time. No one wants to believe what is about to come true.
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What is the Spanish language plot outline for Schockwellen - Nachrichten aus der Pandemie (2021)?
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