The sudden popularity of Steven Soderbergh's 2011 thriller Contagion isn't surprising; it bears an uncanny resemblance to the world we're living in right now. But it isn't the only film to do so. Today, a virtual discussion titled Pandemics in Cinema: Filming the Invisible Enemy by Columbia Global Centers, Mumbai, will highlight how cinema has tackled the subject. It will be helmed by the centre's director, sociocultural anthropologist Ravina Aggarwal and Richard Peña, director emeritus, New York Film Festival and professor of film studies, Columbia University. And in an email interview, Peña tells us that the idea for this event came about naturally.

In the American film Contagion, Peña says, "the virus kills well-placed and successful business people as well as waiters and cooks in a restaurant — weirdly, the virus brings us together, shows our common humanity, again at a time in which America seems divided along numerous vectors"