Watch The First Wave

The documentary film The First Wave is an intimate character-driven look at the COVID-19 pandemic told from the POV of healthcare workers and patients at a hospital in Queens, NY. Matthew Heineman had reached out to a source from his previous film Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, to reach out to different medical facilities in New York, with Long Island Jewish Medical Center allowing Heineman and his crew to film. Heineman and the crew used an unused conference room in the hospital to change into medical gear and keep their equipment, rotating in two-person crews, wearing the same Personal protective equipment as nurses and doctors, with no one on the crew testing positive for the virus.

In April 2020, it was announced Heineman would direct a documentary film revolving around the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on health care workers with Alex Gibney set to serve as an executive producer.

The First Wave is a 2021 documentary with a runtime of 1 hour and 33 minutes. It has received mostly positive reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 7.0 and a MetaScore of 85.