Together with artist Sean Vegezzi, Poitras puts viewers outside an NYPD outpost in Queens used by the Technical Assistance Response Unit, whose role is to monitor political protests.
Vegezzi, whose brother was among a prison detail from Rikers Island tasked with burying the dead, used a drone to show how detainees with little social distancing or protective equipment stacked coffins in deep trenches at the height of the pandemic.
The triptych’s bleak, distanced footage contrasts with Poitras’ 25-minute film “Terror Contagion” about Israeli spyware company NSO and its alleged role in the monitoring of activists around the world.
The filmmaker was herself the subject of intense surveillance by the U.S.