Logline
During the brutal 2020 Covid outbreak in New York, a frontline resident doctor and her husband must face love, death, fear and helplessness before her next 24-hour shift in the ‘Death Zone’.
location: new york, new york
The Story takes place during the first and most brutal COVID outbreak in New York City.
Dying people overwhelm the hospitals exceeding their capacity. Huge emergency tents are set up, not only around the Medical Centers but in Central Park and many other parts of the city.
time: 2020, easter
At this point, no one knows what this virus is capable of.
There are not enough tests, no one knows any treatment, vaccinations are nowhere yet. Morgues are full, corpses are packed into refrigerator trucks with forklifts, many times in the streets.
THIS IS WAR
Doctors cannot cure people and have to watch them die under their hands.
Patients are suffocating in sheer terror with no family around.
No pause, no grief, no absolution.
THE CHARACTERS
Our Heroes are Ilona and Gabor, a Hungarian immigrant couple. They came to the US a few years back for the promise of the American Dream.
our heroes
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Ilona
…is an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) resident doctor who works in 24-hour shifts under the surge. She is desperate, depressed, and frustrated. Not just because of the PPE shortage, or the amount of work, but the helplessness. On top of that, she is unable to deal with the remorse of putting her husband in danger. Thanks to the lack of PCR tests, she suspects illness everywhere and doesn’t let her husband touch her or get close. Yet, without a shadow of a doubt, she is going to show up at her next shift.
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Gabor
…is an artist/photographer who has no job under COVID. His existential crisis is dwarfed by watching his wife suffering between her shifts. He struggles with watching Ilona go back to the Death Zone day after day. Gabor witnessed his mother suffocate as she died of lung cancer and the thought that he could lose his wife the same way causes him frequent panic attacks which he deliberately hides from Ilona as he tries to keep her head above water.
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context
The sour clash of their frustration is inevitable and takes place between two 24-hours shifts in a New York apartment on Easter, 2020.
