Frontline: Season 2020, Episode 11

2020 - 11: Inside Italy's COVID War: Francesca's Story

Much of the suffering wrought by COVID-19 has played out where we cannot see: in closed hospital units.

With unprecedented access, award-winning filmmaker Sasha Joelle Achilli goes inside a hospital during the coronavirus crisis in northern Italy, capturing an unforgettable look at the harrowing, heroic fight doctors and nurses are waging against the disease.

"We have few weapons. The virus has them all," says Dr. Francesca Mangiatordi, a senior ER doctor at Cremona Hospital. "But with the few we have, we are trying to resist and fight back." Achilli's camera follows Mangiatordi, her staff, and the patients they're treating, creating an intimate and profound portrait of those at the front lines of a global pandemic.