Margaret “Mati” Engel is a chaplain at New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital at the peak of the Covid-19 epidemic. Helping patients and their families confront end-of-life issues, Mati is deeply caring but invests too much of herself in her work. This comes out in regular staff meetings which have the feel of therapy sessions. When her direct supervisor, the Reverend David Fleenor, suggests ways to impose a healthier distance from her patients, Mati grows defensive. Is she really cut out for this emotionally draining work?

Director Lorentzen’s uncomfortably intimate look into committed individuals struggling with the most harrowing of assignments generates all the dread and tension found in the best thrillers. Your heart goes out to those experiencing loss and grief but also on the professionals serving them, many of whom, understandably, are stressed to the breaking point. We see this clearly in the intense, high-strung Mati, but also in the seemingly assured, mild-mannered David Fleenor, who is himself receiving private counseling as he questions his own life path. Don’t miss this riveting, unflinching profile of spiritual caregivers serving on the front lines of Covid, doing the tough work few among us would sign up for.