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Cast:
William Hurt, Zackie Achmat, Peter Mugyenyi, Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu, Yusuf Hamied, Joesph Stiglitz, Edwin Cameron, Noerine Kaleeba, Nomvuselelo Kalolo
Production:
Sparkwater India
Program:
Studio Cinema -
Saturday, April 12, 2014 - 18:00
Studio Cinema -
Sunday, April 13, 2014 - 15:00
Original title:
Fire in the Blood
Section:
Written by:
Dylan Mohan Gray
Synopsis:
Shot on four continents, FIRE IN THE BLOOD tells the story of the clash between the big pharmaceutical companies and Third World pacients diagnosed with AIDS, an economic war that caused huge human losses, waged at the end of the ’90s and the beginning of the new century. Patents and the right of the corporations to set their own prices amount to nothing less than a death sentence. Forbidding the import of generic medicine lead to the demise of over ten million people between the years of 1996, when the first anti-retroviral drugs were released, and 2003, when a trans-continental coalition of activists, former statesmen and producers of generic medicine succeeded in putting an end to the genocide. But for how long?
Director:
Born of Punjabi-Irish descent on the remote Prince Edward Island off Canada’s Atlantic coast, Dylan Mohan Gray graduates in History and Film at Dartmouth College (USA), with degrees at the University of Vienna and the Budapest University of Economics. Among his main areas of research at the time is the study of the geographical dimensions of identity. After a chance meeting in Budapest with a former colleague who was acting as an assistant director alongside David Cronenberg, Gray decides to dedicate himself to a career in cinema. This is how he get to work with names such as Deepa Mehta, Fatih Akin, Peter Greenaway or Paul Greengrass. In 2005, he founds his own production company, Sparkwater India. He lives in Mumbai and is a dual citizen of India and Canada.
Statement:
With its five-week stint in Mumbai, FIRE IN THE BLOOD set the new national record for the longest theatrical run by a non-fiction film. The great achievement of the Punjabi-Indian director is to have reached such impressive numbers by carefully avoiding the lure of the anti-corporate discourse. His film is not about a gigantic abuse, or the lack of humanity in those who sacrificed millions of lives for the sake of profit, but about what each of us can do in order to keep history from repeating itself. The future of generic medicines depends of our acceptance or refusal to play a part that has been already laid out for us: that of powerless victims. “Powerful. Extremely moving. A shocking account of international trade terrorism”, writes about the film David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter.
Festivals, awards:
- Washington DC IFF 2013: Justice Matters Award
- DOXA Film Festival 2013: Feature Documentary Award
- Grierson British Documentary Awards: shortlisted in the category “Best Cinema Documentary”
- Filmfest Hamburg 2013: Best Political Film Prize
- Mumbai IFF 2014: Dadasaheb Phalke Chitranagari Award for Best Debut Film for a Director
- Sundance FF; Doc/FestSheffield; Helsinki IFF etc.