COVID-19 docu-thriller ‘The Curve’ traces 90 days that sealed America’s fate

Jet Black Iris Productions is today launching feature documentary The Curve, an investigative thriller examining the decisions that led to America’s COVID-19 crisis, made in secret over the past six months.

Directed by Academy Award-nominee Adam Benzine (Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah) and featuring an original score by Emmy-winning composer Joel Goodman (JFK, Walt Disney, Q Ball), The Curve traces the crucial three-month period, from mid-January to mid-April, when the choices made by America’s leaders sealed the country’s fate.

The film is screening for buyers this week during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) market, with all rights and territories available. Production is complete and final postproduction is underway, with the feature doc ready for U.S. broadcast in October.

Combining original interviews with creatively treated archival footage, and made under exceptional circumstances, the film boasts interviews with more than two dozen experts, analysts, researchers, journalists and political figures, examining nine key failures made by the American government that allowed an emerging pandemic to become a national catastrophe.

Among the many experts featured in the film are Dr. Ali Khan, former director of the CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response; Dr. Emily Landon, chief infectious-disease epidemiologist at University of Chicago Medicine; Sonya Shah, investigative journalist and author of Pandemic; Ilan Goldenberg, former U.S. State Department Advisor; Dr. Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, director of the Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC); and Ed Yong, The Atlantic’s chief science writer.

Producer-Director Adam Benzine said: “My hope is that The Curve will be for COVID-19 what Inside Job was for the housing market collapse. With the U.S. death toll nearing 200,000, Americans are understandably furious. They are demanding to know how this could have happened. And using meticulous research, in-depth context, creatively treated archival and expert first-person testimony, we reveal just that.

“While circumstances mean this movie will likely launch first on the small screen, it’s our intention to have this work of cinema – which has been created and scored with the big screen in mind – in theatres globally as soon as is safe and feasible.” 

Mr. Benzine has assembled an all-star team of predominantly female creatives for the documentary, including Canadian Screen Award-nominee Tiffany Beaudin (Prosecuting Evil, Man vs. Machine) as Editor; Melissa Hood (The Reckoning, On My Way Out) as Associate Producer; Diana Warmé (The Skyjacker’s Tale) as Line Producer; and entertainment lawyer Divya Shahani as Executive Producer.