One wouldn’t be surprised to see a follow-up in years to come. Striking a balanced note of hopefulness and caution, “How to Survive a Pandemic” differs significantly from “How to Survive a Plague” in the largely present-tense nature of its investigation: Whereas the latter film had years of hindsight through which to process grief and evaluate systemic failures and breakthroughs, “Pandemic” has a rawness suited to its evolving moment, leaving many questions open even as it celebrates certain answers. (More so, perhaps, than COVID-themed docs released in earlier chapters of the pandemic’s ongoing narrative, when there was less light at the end of the tunnel.) Researched and assembled with his characteristic intelligence and thoroughness, “ How to Survive a Pandemic” serves as both a valuable potted history of the last two years of medical tumult and relief, and a critical progress report marking work yet to be done. Hardly the first high-profile documentary on the pandemic, but the most substantial yet to focus specifically on the trajectory of the vaccine, France’s film is assured a receptive audience when it bows on HBO next week, following docfest premiere slots in Thessaloniki and Copenhagen. A superb overview of the early years of HIV-AIDS activism in the face of political indifference and ineptitude - ultimately leading to game-changing medication and pharmaceutical policy change - that film has given France a solid grounding for another feature-length study of very different if somewhat comparable global health crisis, centered on the COVID-19 pandemic and the extraordinarily accelerated scientific race for a solution. A decade ago, when his documentary “How to Survive a Plague” rode a wave of festival acclaim to an Oscar nomination, journalist-turned-filmmaker David France probably didn’t imagine that a similarly titled quasi-sequel was in the cards.
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