Saturday, 16 Nov 2024

Opinion | My Father Was in a Coma for 57 Days. He Awoke to a Pandemic.

Video by Mario Lumbreras and Laura Brasero

Mr. Lumbreras and Mrs. Brasero are documentary filmmakers.

Text by Mario Lumbreras

In late February 2020, my father was admitted to a hospital outside Madrid with difficulty breathing. A day later, he was induced into a coma. He had no idea that he was one of the first people to be infected with the coronavirus in Spain. After 57 days of fighting for his life, he woke up with many questions about what happened to him and what our family had gone through.

To help fill that void in our father’s memory, we gathered the videos, voice messages, photographs and texts that our family had exchanged to keep each other apprised of his condition. The short documentary above uses these intimate recordings and images to tell the story of those excruciating, uncertain weeks.

Mario Lumbreras and Laura Brasero are documentary filmmakers in Spain.

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