During an online talk with IFC Films, France said since the pandemic started, he’s rewatched “How To Survive a Plague” — his 2012 documentary about the AIDS epidemic — “with fresh eyes … It offers kind of a blueprint for getting through, interfacing with science … at a time when expertise is really the key tool.”

He said the movie shows it’s “possible to engage with your community of experts in ways that are productive” and “insist upon urgency, but also morality and kindness and humanity.”