Today it is a chronic disease

“From Living Loving Dying – 20 years later” documents the long-term effects of AIDS There is no music, no filler images, no graphically presented figures or information about the interview partners beyond their first names. There is only the conversation, the narrative in front of a motionless camera.
The viewer sits at a table with Ernst, Brigitte, Wolfgang and Irene, whose lives have been shaped by AIDS – through the death of their partners, their support for sufferers, their educational work and the virus itself. Austrian filmmakers Manfred Neuwirth and Walter Hiller have brought them back in front of the camera for “Living and Dying. Experiences with AIDS – 20 Years Later”.

The four of them (the fifth person interviewed has since passed away) were already protagonists in “From Living Loving Dying” in 1993. Excerpts from this first examination of the topic are shown at the beginning of the new film: in 20 years, not only the appearance of the interviewees has changed. After the death of an entire generation of sufferers in the 1980s and 1990s, an infection with the HI virus, diagnosed in time, has developed into a chronic illness – and has lost attention in society.
“At that time, AIDS was a sensational disease,” Neuwirth recalls. ”Our film dealt with the topic as a counterpoint to normal people. Today, there are parties and celebrations rather than a deeper examination of things.” However, the unagitated, personal approach to which the filmmakers have remained true has lost none of its urgency. In 61 minutes, it summarizes the recorded conversations thematically into six chapters. In the process, four personalities emerge – between retrospectives and reflections, between exhaustion and successes in the fight against AIDS and the sometimes very intimate consequences of one's own illness.

It is this unbiased approach that gives the film its power; a power that is also sorely needed in the effort not to lose sight of the global fight against AIDS.

Sabine Zeithammer, Falter