Based on actual events about the real heroes of the fight against AIDS, 120 Beats Per Minute focuses on street activists using pressure tactics against politicians and suffering prejudices about AIDS victims. Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes.
Early 1990s, France. With AIDS having already claimed countless lives for nearly ten years, Act up-Paris activists multiply actions to fight general indifference and force the authorities to fund medical research more intensively and systematically raise awareness among the young people about safe sex. As many members of Act Up are HIV-positive, their fight carries an extremely emotional tone – knowing that their last bits of strength will be invested into the struggle for social justice, which only the coming generations of AIDS victims will benefit from.
"When I was in ACT UP, (...) I always thought that we were at war. We had flags with these pink triangles as if we were engaged in perpetual battles. So we developed an aesthetic that was thought as such, a rhetorical vehicle for expressing our principles. That's why I wanted to show activists who struggle, create a rhetoric and make AIDS a political goal." (Robin Campillo)
Robin CampilloŽ
Born in Morocco, in 1962. In 1983, he entered the La Femis Film School in Paris, where he met Laurent Cantet, with whom he has collaborated since the late 1990s as editor and co-screenwriter. In 2004, he directed his first feature film, They Came Back. Eastern Boys, his second feature film, received the Orizzonti Prize for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival.