Such scenes of human trauma, often covert portrayals of grief and desperation rather than outright displays of misery, pepper Wuhan Wuhan, a feature-length documentary by Canadian-Chinese director Yung Chang who, while in lockdown in Toronto, edited 300 hours of raw footage taken by local videographers into the film.

Chang is among a handful of overseas Chinese directors who have made fly-on-the-wall documentaries about Wuhan at its darkest hour. Their work is a welcome departure from domestically made documentaries that uniformly portray China’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic as being a victory for the resilience of its medical personnel.

Another film, Coronation, was remotely directed by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, currently in exile in Portugal. Released last year, it shows how the Chinese government brought the pandemic in Wuhan under control at great human cost: a contract worker, not allowed to go home after the construction of a hospital was completed, is shown living rough on the streets; meanwhile, families are not allowed to collect deceased relatives’ remains without government officials being present.

Ai edited his film from 500 hours of footage shot by volunteers and hired videographers. Turned down by film festivals in Venice, Toronto and New York and rejected by Netflix and Amazon, the film can be viewed on-demand on streaming platforms including Vimeo and Alamo.

In contrast, Wuhan Wuhan has been received better. It has been selected to be shown in competition at various film festivals, including the upcoming Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, which runs from April 29 to May 9.

Chang says that although he and his team will try to get the documentary released in China after doing the rounds of overseas film festivals, the last thing he wants is for Wuhan Wuhan to be labelled a propaganda film.

“The decision to hire me was very conscious, so as to not create the feeling that this is a propaganda film,” he says. “I had my own editorial control.”

Executive produced by action superstar Donnie Yen Ji-dan, and co-produced by Donna Gigliotti of Silver Linings Playbook and Shakespeare in Love fame, Wuhan Wuhan follows the lives of seven people during a 77-day lockdown, including a couple expecting a baby girl, an infected mother and son living in Fangcang hospital, and frontline medical workers.

What shines through in the film is people’s determination to keep their chins up and live as usual. The mother persuades her reluctant son to learn English after their symptoms subside. Patients and staff at Fangcang hospital do square dancing and tai chi.

Chang says he wants to steer clear of lurid images and sensational headlines to show the humanistic side of what happened in Wuhan. “There are no talking-head interviews [in the film]. It’s not political; it’s a social-issue documentary using a cinema verité approach,” he explains, referring to filmmaking characterised by natural actions and authentic dialogue.

New York-based director Hao Wu also adopted a gritty social approach to filming the Wuhan lockdown in 76 Days. He remotely edited his film from footage shot in Wuhan by two Chinese filmmakers, who want to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of some of the recordings.

Wu has no plans to release the film in China, as he does not want the bother of putting it through the censorship process. He doesn’t want to amend the film for a China release “as I want to maintain artistic integrity”, he says.

“The early scenes show patients trying to push their way into a hospital,” Wu says. “We portrayed the early panic, fear and chaos. Although Wuhan survived the lockdown, there’s a lot of sadness [in the film]. I don’t know how the government will perceive this.”

Wu’s previous works have run the gauntlet of Chinese censors and internet trolls. After People’s Republic of Desire (2018), which follows the lives of Chinese internet celebrities, premiered at the First International Film Festival in the northwest city of Xining, “many studios wanted to release it in China”, he recalls. “We spent a long time trying to get the film approved. [But] we had to give up as [the censors] didn’t like how the internet celebrities were portrayed.”

“Nationalistic trolls accused me of making 76 Days with a pro-West agenda,” he says. “There have been a lot of personal attacks.”

76 Days captures Wuhan people navigating the crisis with grit and compassion. In the film, a distraught hospital employee returns the mobile phones of deceased patients to their families. A son urges his infected father to fight on like an old communist comrade.

Wu says he wants to tell a universal story with the film. “We intentionally stripped out a lot of specific details that are uniquely Chinese or Wuhan. The film could happen in [any other] Asian or Western city.” He adds that his understanding of both the strengths and drawbacks of Chinese and Western culture allows him to present the pandemic with more impartiality.

The same could be said about the director of Wuhan Wuhan. Having grown up in Canada, but with extensive roots in China, Chang says his background allows him to see things from the perspective of people both inside and outside China.

“I personally did not feel very connected to my surroundings in Canada when growing up,” says Chang, who has made a series of films on China including Up the Yangtze (2007) and China Heavyweight (2012), both of which won Golden Horse awards for best documentary. “I was bullied because of being Chinese. I felt like an outsider. I have a lot of relatives in Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei. I fulfilled my sense of self by connecting to my Chinese origins. I get inspired by being in China. I don’t have that same feeling when I am in the West.”

Chang believes Wuhan, like him, is an outsider that doesn’t fit in – a theme he explores in many of his movies.

“Western people don’t understand the city. The ones I spoke to think it’s … [just a] wet market … a backward village. So I want to flip the narrative and show that Wuhan is a thriving and beautiful city, to peel back the statistics and news headlines to find the heart of Wuhan.”

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