El acompañante (2015)
43KEl acompañante: Directed by Pavel Giroud. With Camila Arteche, Armando Miguel Gómez, Broselianda Hernández, Yotuel Romero. A disgraced boxer gradually forms an unlikely friendship with an HIV positive patient he is tasked with monitoring at a military-run sanitarium in 1980s Cuba.
“It is the first film that I have seen (and that I know of) that takes HIV / AIDS in heterosexual people as its main subject, and that is something to highlight. It is also a Cuban film (although it received funding from other countries) that makes, a certain self-criticism of how this country dealt with the crisis of the first years of this pandemic is another thing to remark. In the 80s and even entering the 90s, prejudice, neglect and mistreatment prevailed in all countries of the world, towards those affected by this new virus and disease named as u0026quot;gay canceru0026quot;, although it was known that it also affected (to a lesser extent) women, heterosexual men, children, etc … Anyway, it continued to be taken as a u0026quot;gay diseaseu0026quot; by media, the film industry and many governments. u0026quot;Aids moviesu0026quot; were made which showed stories of gay men dying of AIDS. In those early years, some countries did nothing to address the issue, (due to the sexual taboo that surrounded it). Others, like Cuba, went to extreme measures, as isolating and treating infected people, but althoug it helped at the begining, to stop the virus spread, it was soon proven inhuman and useless, above all, when first useful drugs were available. Well, this movie focus on what happened, in those years, to many heterosexual people in Cuba who lived with the virus. Recommended to see.”
