11/05/2021 - This coronavirus-themed documentary by Udi Nir and Sagi Bornstein will make you suffer from YouTube fatigue
Viral – world-premiering at Hot Docs – is a tiresome, tiresome experience. There are a few reasons for that, the first being the simple fact that the pandemic isn’t quite over just yet. It feels premature to go down that COVID hole once again and watch it unravel in 2020, which is exactly what
Udi Nir and
Sagi Bornstein (also behind
#Uploading Holocaust) decided to do. What’s more, they show it playing out solely via YouTube videos, uploaded by increasingly scared/misinformed/bored young influencers, accompanied by a vexing soundtrack. Which, frankly, makes this 80-or-so-minutes-long film feel longer than
4/29/2021
In this documentary composed only of YouTube videos, Udi Nir and Sagi Bornstein follow seven Gen Z vloggers during the unprecedented year that was 2020.
To appreciate the roving, sometimes gauche nature of
Viral, a new documentary following seven YouTube vloggers in 2020, one must consider its experimental form. Premiering at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, the film, directed by Udi Nir and Sagi Bornstein, is entirely composed of YouTube videos. This means it is at the mercy of its source material, which privileges authenticity, skews confessional and doesn’t lend itself to an orderly narrative.
Nir and Bornstein specialize in this kind of experimentation. For their previous documentary,