Latest in The First Wave

After they won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019 for their thrilling Free Solo, directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin went underground—in a manner of speaking. They tunneled into the true-life story of kids trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand for their filmmaking follow up, The Rescu…

EXCLUSIVE: National Geographic is making the Oscar-shortlisted documentary The First Wave available for free for 48 hours, beginning tomorrow. Matthew Heineman's film, shot in a Queens hospital as New York City endured the initial explosion of Covid, can be seen without commercial interruption on NatGeo.com and…

New York City has recorded more than 1.1 million cases of Covid since the pandemic began almost two years ago. The disease has claimed almost 35,000 lives in the city alone. But statistics only go so far in telling the story. The documentary The First Wave, directed by Matthew Heineman, shows what it was really like…

When New York City became the epicenter of the country's Covid outbreak in 2020, many residents—those of means, anyway—fled to second homes or other points far from the city. But not New York-based filmmaker Matthew Heineman. He suited up in PPE on the frontlines of the Covid battle. The Oscar-nominated director…

C'mon C'mon from A24 turned in the best per-screen average for a limited platform release since Covid at five theater in New York and LA as stellar critical response was met by strong exit polls ahead of a wider rollout into top markets over Thanksgiving and continued expansion thereafter. The Mike Mills' awards…

The First Wave director Matthew Heineman said his Covid documentary was both frightening and inspiring. Heineman followed medical personnel at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in the Queens borough of New York for four months in 2020. He spoke at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary event about the experience. "I…

EXCLUSIVE: National Geographic Documentary Films, Neon and Participant have dropped the trailer for The First Wave, the latest film from Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning director Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land, A Private War). Heineman produced the Covid-themed feature-length doc under his Our Time Projects banner…

Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman never has shied from dangerous and somewhat frightening real-life situations in which to set his documentaries. Cartel Land found him embedded with those on the hunt for dangerous Mexican drug cartels. City of Ghosts saw him in the center of the fight against…

HamptonsFilm, the presenting organization of the Hamptons International Film Festival, said the festival’s 29th edition will return to in-person events and screenings in October. The festival will open October 7 with the world premiere of Academy Award-nominated director Matthew Heineman's The First Wave. The feature…

National Geographic Documentary Films on Monday announced its acquisition of Oscar-nominated director Matthew Heineman's documentary The First Wave, a ground-level view inside a New York hospital as the city battled the initial explosion of Covid-19. The vérité-style film, from Participant and Heineman's Our Time…