A Covid chronicle

“The sun shining on no one, streets filled with emptiness…” this video diary produced by Holy Fools doesn’t at first seem to promise any startling new angle on our corona world.  

Yet, the imagery is superb and, combined with a commentary describing topsy-turvy nocturnal days and “lives lived between walls, between screens”, the film, titled The Night That Looked Like Day, will stand as an important record of how we experienced the global crisis.

Where Opstal and her DP Pieter Colombijn couldn’t shoot themselves they asked filmmakers around the world, along with their friends and even friends of friends, to create footage of their own new realities. 

The result is a collection of stories about human adaptation and innovation, about life, death and, ultimately, unity. About the paradox of a time of isolation that also offered new connections – relationships with neighbours we’d never seen before, of greater shared experiences between countries and communities. “It made us all one person, which is more than seven billion.” 

The optimistic message is that the crisis has brought the world together and maybe we can stay that way, regardless of what is to come.