In early March 2020, when we received the assignment to shoot this film for People & Power, our home city, Rome, was still very much unfazed by the emergency. Although northern Italian regions like Lombardia and Emilia-Romagna were by then already cordoned off from the rest of the country, the national death count was still in the hundreds and we all still hoped that the virus would go away as suddenly as it had appeared. We would be sadly disappointed. On March 9, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced a nationwide lockdown due to the quick spread of the contagion and the steep increase in the number of casualties.

But how does one shoot a film under such unprecedented conditions?