'We knew so little': the young film-makers who captured early quarantine life

HBO's Covid Diaries NYC stitches together five documentary shorts by film-makers between 16-22, covering the dizzying, surreal first days of the pandemic

The middle of March 2021 will bring, for most Americans, a strange, surreal anniversary: the year mark of the horrifying realization - be it through a tweet, a cancellation, a diagnosis of a loved one or a celebrity, a lost job or gig - that the coronavirus was a very real threat that would implode the world as we knew it. For Aracelie Colon, then a 16-year-old high school junior in Manhattan, it was the email announcing a two-week closure from school. For fellow high school junior Shane Fleming, it was the positive diagnosis of a classmate and the closure of the Film Forum, where the movie buff caught a final feature showing on 14 March. For Arlet Guallpa, then 22, it was an ambulance outside her building in Washington Heights, fetching the first of many residents who would succumb to the virus.

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