ANGEL IN A MASK
How British star Florence Pugh is telling the incredible story of the ...
Oscar-nominated star Florence Pugh ‘dropped everything’ to narrate a hardhitting BBc documentary about medical staff at an Italian hospital battling to save lives in the early days of the pandemic.
‘ I can barely cry,’ says Dr Francesca Mangiatordi, her haunted face staring into a laptop at the cremona Hospital in Lombardy, Northern Italy.
Documentarian sasha Joelle achilli made her way alone, from London to her homeland, where she wasn’t allowed to visit her parents or her sister because of lockdown. she had arranged to film Dr Mangiatordi for a few days, but instead remained for three weeks as the entire hospital was turned over to covid-19 cases.
The powerful film, Italy’s Frontline: a Doctor’s Diary, will be shown on BBc2 and iPlayer on June 29.
The dialogue is in Italian with English subtitles. But achilli and her executive producer Dan Edge felt it required narration for its UK broadcast. so they set their sights on Pugh, who has appeared in several films including Little Women ( for which she received an academy award nod for best supporting actress) because ‘she has a beautiful voice: warm, young’, achilli said. They sent the actress a long, rough-cut version of the feature and received a swift response from her agent. ‘she said Florence would do it, no questions asked,’ achilli told me. ‘she dropped everything.’ Pugh has been staying in Los angeles where she has a studio, in which she’s been recording vocal tracks for audio books and online theatre. she sent an audio test to achilli and Edge for the narrator’s role. ‘We connected on skype and we directed her,’ achilli said. There’s something about Pugh that matches the passion and strength displayed by Dr Mangiatordi in the film. The doctor’s teenage son likens his mother to a movie superhero, in her fight against the virus. Interestingly, most of the protagonists in the documentary are women. achilli, who donned as much protective gear as they did, grew close to the healthcare workers during flming. ‘Women are women, and we talked a lot, openly, about everything,’ she said.
That sense of camaraderie helped her gain access to some incredible scenes in the hospital. she was there when 18-year-old Mattia was admitted, one of the youngest Italians to be infected. His strand of the story is one of the most heart-stopping aspects of the documentary.
When achilli finally returned to London, she spent two days just ‘sleeping and crying’. But she stays in touch with the doctors and nurses in cremona via Whatsapp. ‘They say: “You were in the trenches with us.” But I just turned on a camera,’ says achilli. ‘They did the rest.’