‘A Still Small Voice’ Doc Is Must-See Catharsis for Covid Era

2020 still has its hold on us, and will for a long time.

Not just because COVID is still circulating, but because of the emotional fallout of that time that so few of us seem to have processed. Grief is something Americans, in particular, have a hard time with. Nations as varied as Italy, China, and Kazakhstan have had National Days of Mourning for their COVID victims. Spain had 10 days of official national mourning. Mexico, a month. The U.S. had over a million victims, and there’s been no such nationwide remembrance.

Luke Lorentzen’s documentary “A Still Small Voice” is so powerful because, even though it’s not really about Covid at all — the word is only mentioned a couple of times in its entire 93 minutes — it’s about the processing of strong emotions American culture is all too likely to avoid through denial, distraction, and workaholism. Almost therapeutic, the film, which made the Oscars documentary feature shortlist, follows Margaret “Mati” Engel, a chaplain completing her residency at New York City’s Mt. Sinai hospital, from September 2020 (when filming began) until she leaves the program in the summer of 2021. “I do very much see ‘A Still Small Voice‘ as a document of a certain feeling that was very pervasive through the pandemic,” Lorentzen said in an interview with IndieWire.

The film also focuses on Engel’s supervisor, the Episcopal minister David Fleenor. Lorentzen got extraordinary access from Mt. Sinai to…