Greg Mortimer | Spanish Film Festival

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Date Reviewed: 15/06/2023

From acclaimed documentary filmmaker Federico Lemos, Greg Mortimer is a revealing account of the events on board the Greg Mortimer cruise ship in 2020, which was broadcast live to the world.

The Greg Mortimer tourist cruise liner set off for Antarctica just as the World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 pandemic. What was thought to be the safest place in the world rapidly became a nightmare when the first positive case was detected. Contagion ran riot, and the ship became stranded in the middle of the ocean as each subsequent country they approached refused to receive it, until Uruguay.

The boat reached the Uruguayan coast severely crippled by illness and mental anxiety, with positive cases in 70% of passengers and crew, which included Australians, New Zealanders, Americans, and Europeans. Uruguay decided to put in place an operation to repatriate passengers and provide aid to the ship which docked in the port of Montevideo.

Greg  Mortimer features testimonies from the surviving passengers and crew and those from the dangerous rescue operation. This is a story where compassion, teamwork and organised action were vital to containing the impacts of a catastrophe.

I found this film compulsive viewing. Once I started watching, I just couldn’t stop. What was fascinating was the way the crew and passengers became one in a calamity.

For those of us who have not had the experience, it is impossible to imagine being confined to a cabin for up to 50 days. The physical and mental anguish must have been terrible. This film goes some way to helping us understand that there were people far worse off than most of us during the lockdown.

It is an important piece of film that is being shown at a fortuitous time. As day-to-day conditions slowly return to normal, it is timely to remind ourselves not to let all precautions slip because COVID has not really gone away.

Greg Mortimer is an important documentary that is sure to interest everybody. It gives another dimension to the COVID crisis and is compulsive viewing!

Reviewed by Barry Hill AOM