The Last Cruise (2021)

A terrifying origin story of the pandemic, HBO’s 40-minute documentary The Last Cruise chronicles the first and largest outbreak of the novel coronavirus outside China: the Diamond Princess cruise liner.

As the uncontained outbreak on the luxury vessel at the start of the pandemic in January 2020 became a global spectacle and a faraway symbol of the new virus and its potential to upend any sense of normalcy, passengers aboard the ill-fated cruise ship were quarantined in their staterooms for weeks as the crew tended to the sick, delivered room service and slept and dined in cramped, shared quarters. Through never-before-seen footage from passengers and crew, we watch class divisions erupt as humanity misses its chance to contain Covid-19.

Directed by Hannah Olsen (Baby God), The Last Cruise has a 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was nominated for Best Short Documentary at the 2021 Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, with The Film Stage calling it “a vital and horrifying record of a crisis that we should have quickly learned from, that captures the moment with the immediacy of Facebook Live or Snapchat.”