A FILM BY ERIK PAUSER DYLAN WILLIAMS AND TINNI RAPPE
Swedish title “Smittad — När HIV kom till Sverige” As the HIV epidemic spread around the world in the early 1980′s panic broke out. In Sweden alone newspapers predicted that over a million people would die before the year 2000. HIV patients were often kept under lock and key as authorities struggled to know what to do and the public in general believed anything they heard. Using unique and often very telling archive material, this film will weave the compelling and emotive stories of people whose lives were changed forever by the ‘virus from hell’.
As we look into the not so distant past and observe the reflex actions of our society when under threat, this film asks what we have learnt from our experience and whether it will allow us to deal with the next crisis differently?
Sweden in the 1980s. The yuppie had emerged, we wore shoulder pads and practiced aerobics. The gay movement was on the rise, and nightlife had begun to flourish. But there was a rumble in the background. An until-then unknown deadly virus was spreading among gay men, and medical science was at a loss. In the documentary, unique archival material is interspersed with voices from those who were there during the early days when HIV arrived in Sweden.