How <em>Totally Under Control</em> pulled off a secret, explosive COVID-19 documentary

The new documentary, which examines the government&apos;s failure to contain the virus in devastating detail, was completed in secret in just five months, with the filmmakers determined to release it ahead of Election Day. As the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading throughout the country in early April, co-director Alex Gibney (Going Clear) was already forming a plan to document the story on film."I was motivated because a friend of mine had died from COVID, and another friend was on a ventilator," Gibney explains. I thought it would be a potent thing to try to do a film investigating that and see if we could release it before the election because it seemed that the election was a kind of existential judgment on the [government&apos;s] performance."Gibney brought co-directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger on board to help tackle the challenge. "That was really frustrating to hear, that not only could we not tell the story from the horse&apos;s mouth in the film, but the information was also not getting out to the American people."After a feverish post-production involving four film editors — "It was only with the extraordinary storytelling skill of these editors that we were able to get to where we got," Gibney says — Totally Under Control was finally unveiled to the world, presenting the first rough draft of history for this still-unfolding story.