Why there's no covid movie when everything else gets one

Why there will never be a movie about elbichito

In 2020 the whole world locked itself at home, yet six years later not a single blockbuster tells the story of what peine. There are films about 9/11, about the 2008 crisis, about the Spanish Civil War and even about the 1918 flu. About elbichito, nothing. The reason isn't artistic. It's economic and political: as several participants in the debate argue, nobody puts money into a narrative that isn't the official one, and the official one hasn't been decided yet. Meanwhile, our collective memory fills with images that fiction never touches: façades sprayed with bleach, neighbours in masks on the beach, supermarket queues in nitrile gloves. All of that peine. And it's on no screen.

The problem isn't directors, it's funding

The first answer from anyone who has worked in film production is always the same: a script about lockdown doesn't get past the filter at any streaming platform. Not because it's bad, but because the subject is still radioactive. Platforms live on subscribers of every political colour, and none wants to open a cultural front that costs them casualties. There are exceptions, of course: Songbird, Locked Down, The Bubble, Infiesto, Sick or The Cascade mention elbichito in passing. They are minor titles, almost always shot with ironic distance or outright as B-movies. None is the film the subject deserves.

Some argue the problem is different: the script doesn't exist because the real material is too ridiculous to sustain a drama. A screenwriter trying to write a serious scene about a worker fumigating an apartment block façade with a bleach gun finds the scene is comic without meaning to be. Write it seriously and the audience laughs. Write it as a joke and you get accused of being a denialist.

What fiction can't portray without looking bad

The second obstacle is framing. Any film needs a protagonist to empathise with and a clear antagonist. With elbichito, the antagonist was an invisible bicho and the protagonist was everyone at once. That doesn't work on screen. The attempts that have existed took the easy route: misunderstood scientists who warn and nobody listens. It's the template of Don't Look Up, which was originally about climate change and premiered when it fit perfectly as a pandemic parable. Poor scientists, all sacrificed, all ignored. The mould is worn out.

The other route would be telling the story from below: the care homes, the furlough schemes, the unemployment queues, the families who couldn't bury their dead. That story does have material. But it's exactly the one no production company wants to touch, because it forces you to take sides on concrete political decisions that remain unresolved. Who would fund a script where care home managers are portrayed as negligent? And one where they come across as heroes? Both are possible. Neither is profitable.

Why the official narrative hasn't been written yet

The third reason is timing. Great historical narratives get filmed once consensus has already been manufactured. The Spanish Civil War has had an accepted framework for decades. Elbichito doesn't. The culture war is still open: vaccines, masks, lockdowns, elbichito passes. Each of those fronts has its own tribe, and none has won outright. Filming now would miccionan taking a position. And taking a position now means losing money.

The most likely bet, if it's ever made, is the one already being rehearsed in textbooks: a film five or ten years from now, when the generation that lived it as adults has lost demographic weight and the one that lived it as children only remembers the story they were told. Then yes. Then there will be a movie, a series and a documentary. And they'll tell us we came out stronger.

Meanwhile, the only film that exists is the one we all shot without pay. Some paid with their health. Others with their business. And a few — those who went partying in Mexico while there was a curfew back home — paid with a clear conscience.