Program 2021

Access to information is difficult if not impossible in China. The start of the epidemic in Wuhan at the end of 2019 and in January 2020 remains mysterious due to the authorities' lack of transparency. With his feature film Coronation, shot on location in the greatest secrecy and presented in official selection at the FIFDH, artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei lifts the veil on what really happened in Wuhan.

On January 31, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international emergency, two months after Chinese doctors warned of the human transmissibility of the virus. While the WHO continues to praise the very good collaboration and transparency of the authorities, criticisms are surfacing to denounce the organisation's complacency towards Beijing. Authoritarian confinement, arrests of doctors, manipulation of the number of deaths... China seems to have contained the epidemic, but at what price? Ai Weiwei takes a civic and artistic look at the beginning of the crisis, the measures taken in China in the first months of the pandemic and the WHO's response.

CovidAsiaArt & Activism

The interview will be held in English with simultaneous interpretation into French.