Our audience is patients. In the U.S., an HIV diagnosis carries a sense of shame that prevents people from seeking treatment: ~50% are not on treatment. Seeing others, like those in our work, living healthy lives with HIV, lets patients know that they, too, are worthy of treatment and health.

Our director search started with the assignment we gave ourselves: create a new cultural touchpoint for HIV. One that moves away ideas AIDS and death, to the truth, that people can, and do, triumph over their diagnosis.

The directors brought a strong, cinematic eye to the stories of everyday people, living and thriving in the face of HIV and in defiance of cultural expectations.

Rather than back away from the stigma of HIV and the socially charged environment in which it exists, the director took every opportunity to showcase the things that made our people human and worthy of love and health. The words, the details, the moments are all real.

What the audience sees are the stories of the people themselves in all their unvarnished, powerful, and human truth: that you can love who you are and that HIV can’t change that.