'They refused to act': inside a chilling documentary on Trump's bungled Covid-19 response

Totally Under Control recounts the early days of the pandemic in the US, revealing in clinical detail a disastrous federal response to a preventable crisis

In May, as their city began to emerge from the paralyzing grip of coronavirus that killed over 33,000 residents, New York City-based film-makers Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger started retracing still-raw recent history on film. They tracked whistleblowers, and noted comparisons between the disastrous sprawl of coronavirus in the US and South Korea, which received their first positive coronavirus diagnoses on the same day: 20 January. Meetings were held by Zoom, interviews by remote camera draped by a shower curtain - a large, amorphous ghost, compliant with quickly adopted social distancing guidelines.

Related: Totally Under Control review - shocking film on Trump's failure to handle Covid-19