‘Blame’: Christian Frei’s New Doc Unpacks the Scientists Targeted Over COVID Origins

Premiering at Visions du Réel, the film follows three scientists who studied viruses for decades — only to become scapegoats during the COVID-19 pandemic’s disinformation wave.

New Delhi, April 5:
Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei, best known for his Oscar-nominated War Photographer, returns with a powerful and timely new documentary, Blame, which opens the Visions du Réel festival this week. The film zeroes in on the pandemic era’s harshest irony: how the very scientists who worked to prevent global outbreaks became targets of conspiracy theories, political scapegoating, and public mistrust.

At the heart of Blame are Peter Daszak, Zhengli Shi, and Linfa Wang—virologists who rose to prominence after the SARS outbreak of 2003 and subsequently devoted two decades to preventing future pandemics. Yet, as Frei documents, they found themselves vilified amid escalating misinformation campaigns surrounding the origins of COVID-19.

One of the central figures, Daszak, who led the EcoHealth Alliance, was recently defunded and debarred by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after allegations of poor oversight of research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). However, Frei’s film aims not to litigate guilt or innocence, but to explore how narratives are weaponized — and how even those who warn the world can end up blamed.

“I had this epiphany early in the pandemic,” said Frei. “Those who warned us might be the ones who are blamed.”

Frei adopts what he calls a “classic journalistic” yet deeply empathetic documentary lens, giving space to complex truths and resisting oversimplification. This nuance, while not always commercially easy, is a choice Frei says he is privileged to make thanks to Switzerland’s supportive film ecosystem.

Frei’s previous works, including War Photographer and Space Tourists, similarly tackled high-stakes ethical terrains. But with Blame, Frei reflects on a more pervasive societal shift — the dissolution of trust in evidence-based reality.

“We are seduced by screaming narratives,” Frei warns. “Even established media outlets are increasingly indistinguishable from clickbait.”

The film culminates with a pointed twist: the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under Donald Trump, a figure who has actively propagated conspiracy theories about the pandemic. Kennedy’s 2023 book Wuhan Cover-Up frames the virus as a lab-engineered bioweapon — claims widely debunked but politically weaponized.

“Was I surprised? Not really,” Frei admits. “The playbook of Steve Bannon is simple: uncertainty is not the enemy—it’s a tool.”

Blame isn’t limited to U.S. politics. Frei notes similar shifts in Europe, where far-right parties have used disinformation to fuel distrust and polarization.

“This film doesn’t offer the truth. But it’s a call to rediscover our commitment to evidence-based debate,” he says. “In a world where nothing is true anymore, everything becomes possible.”

As Blame opens to festival audiences, its relevance feels more urgent than ever — not just as a film about the COVID-19 crisis, but as a broader exploration of how societies treat truth, science, and the people caught in between.