Sacrament

Straight’s immersive latest (after Mecca) follows a group of nurses at the height of Covid-19 in August 2020. The nurses are not only isolated from their families—they live in a makeshift RV village near the hospital in San Bernardino, Calif.—but they cope with all the death they face in the ICU, where their patients are intubated, by not speaking about it. Among the nurses are Larette, who sings to her comatose patients and longs for her husband, Grief Embers, who works for Animal Control, and their son, Dante, who’s about to enter high school. Larette’s cousin, Cherrise, is one of her coworkers, and Cherrise is constantly worried about her 15-year-old daughter, Raquel, whom she sent to live on her aunt’s date farm. Grief’s best friend, Johnny Frias, the highway patrolman who featured in Mecca, has a crush on Cherrise, whose husband died eight years earlier in a car accident. Told in alternating points of view, the narrative captures the heroism and sacrifice of healthcare workers during the pandemic, and is shot through with rich depictions of Southern California’s landscape, particularly as Raquel learns the ropes of growing dates. It’s a vibrant drama. (Oct.)