AIDS: Doctors and Nurses Tell Their Stories (2017)

• 76%
• 2017
• Documentary
• Alejandro Medina
• Theresa Burns
• Jane Bruton
• Leigh Chislett

For the first time, doctors and nurses who cared for Britain's first AIDS patients in the 1980s tell their stories. They describe a dark time when, with little treatment on offer, their role was to help these young men deal with early, painful and often undignified deaths. The extraordinary situation saw the medics bend and break the rules to provide some comfort and fun for their patients. They formed close friendships with the men they were treating, went to their funerals, mourn them to this day. But that important work took a substantial toll. This film comes when the legacy of that period is in danger of being forgotten. Black and white photographs of young gay men ill and dying on hospital wards are intercut with the honest testimony from the nurses and doctors who fought to give their patients the best death they could in the worst circumstances.