. >> matthew heineman is the oscar nominated filmmaker behind "the first wave" and the physician whoy at long island jewish medical center in queens. i watched the documentary, it was heartbreaking, i got a half hour into it and didn't know if i would be able to finish it, but i'm so glad i did, a powerful piece of filmmaking. matthew, obviously nobody knew how this was going to go in those first early days. what were your thoughts on this project as you got started? did you have any idea what you and what we as a country were getting ourselves into? >> absolutely not. i mean, it was terrifying. i think as this tsunami was about to sweep across our country, and we were inundated with stats and headlines, we felt this enormous need to put a human face to it, to humanize it. we as an american public were so shielded from the realities of what was happening inside hospitals. so we want to try to put audiences inside the shoes of the doctors and patients we ended up following. >> doctor, you were one of the doctors we follow through this documentary. talk to me about what was going on th

. >> reporter: matthew heineman, the oscar nominated-filmmaker behind "tiger" and "cartel land" the gut-wrenchingents were intentional. we see people survive, we see people die. why make the choice to be so raw in a number of places in this film? >> that's the reality of what happened. finding that balance in the edit room was extremely, extremely important. i definitely didn't want to sugarcoat the reality of what we all went through. >> reporter: as pain and loss mounted, a second crisis emerged. following the death of george floyd, tensions over racial injustice boiling over. the filmmaking team capturing unexpected raw moments. >> because i'm tired of seeing people like you in the hospital. i'm tired. i'm tired. it's not even worth it. please. your family cares about you. your family cares about you. your family cares about you. your family cares about you already. >> in my perception, he wanted to be acknowledged. as the gentleman that he is. as that black man, that human being that's just trying to live his day to day. and for me, i just couldn't -- my soul couldn't take any senseless harm

i spoke earlier with a local counselor for the owner heineman, who was saying to me that she's been, were working relentlessly, day and night, trying to get people into temporary accommodation, but says it's the community that have all come together and haven't really seen much help from the government, the government systems in the community has done everything. it was only yesterday that we got the 1st and teams going out and actually attempting to find people. but that was 5 days into this with as a say, a minus 5 degrees to to decrease temperatures. if he were to head oh, people were in a room with no heat, no lights, no food, no means of a hot food. no hot drink. if he was to say that, that 8 and a half for one nights, he would say that was extreme, but fat to happened. it is been ongoing now. well, electrical companies, they say that they've been working with people on the ground to try and resolve the issue many have of course it should apologies to their customers saying that they should probably find alternative accommodation. but i've heard from people here that many have b