KILLA DIZEZ - LIFE AND DEATH IN THE TIME OF EBOLA

While life seems to go on almost normally on the streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone is facing a “Killa Dizez” – another name for Ebola.

This is not a character-driven documentary, rather it is a vision of the ordinary and cruel face of the epidemic. In the hospitals, we encounter different stories and destinies: patients who die, patients who survive, international Ebola workers frustrated by the strength of the virus, local workers who face stigma from their own communities.

To the extent of our knowledge, this documentary shows the only footage ever taken inside the so called “red zone”, the confinement area and ICU ward where highly contagious patients are treated. The author had exclusive access to these wards after undergoing special training for biohazard suits and the decontamination process.

Nico Piro is a special correspondent at Rai, the Italian Public Broadcast network. He independently produced this documentary on holiday, as Rai refused a similar proposal. He couldn’t accept the idea of watching the Ebola crisis through the mainstream media in the world, which was only covering the fate of western patients and not the fate of the millions of West Africans living through this deadly outbreak.
This is an almost-zero-budget one-man production, made possible with the logistical support of Emergency NGO Milan