25 Movies That Honor the Ongoing Fight on World AIDS Day

Its been 42 years since the CDC issued its first report on HIV/AIDS and in those decades much has changed. We have made major strides in both treatment and prevention and continue to do the hard and essential work to end the stigma around HIV. But on World AIDS Day it's also important to take a moment to reflect on all the beautiful and irreplaceable souls we lost along the way, who strived and fought for the world we have today. One way to remember and celebrate those lives is by watching films that remind us of the struggles and joys of people both living with and dying from complications associated with HIV/AIDS. Here are 25 movies to help get you started.

Three Months

A comedic, coming-of-age film about a punk gay teenager from Miami exposed to HIV the weekend of his high school graduation, who starts a new relationship with someone from his support group as he waits the three months to get tested.

Life Support

Queen Latifah stars as an HIV-positive Brooklyn woman who channels her energy and regret over past drug addiction into working for an AIDS outreach group. Her passion for her job reveals her deep desire for atonement, but her stubbornness threatens to drive her family even further away leading her to learn a poignant lesson about loving...and letting go.

Rent

Set in New York City's gritty East Village, the revolutionary rock opera RENT tells the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent. "Measuring their lives in love," these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.

The Cure

Having just moved to a new town, Erik (Brad Renfro) is thrilled when he makes friends with his younger neighbor, Dexter (Joseph Mazzello), and his friendly mom (Annabella Sciorra). Despite the disapproval of his own neglectful mother (Diana Scarwid), Erik grows close to Dexter, who suffers from AIDS. As the disease's impact on Dexter's life grows more noticeable, Erik and Dexter embark on a quest to New Orleans down the Mississippi River, where hope may yet lie with a doctor there.

Boys on the Side

After breaking up with her girlfriend, a nightclub singer, Jane (Whoopi Goldberg), answers a personal ad from Robin (Mary-Louise Parker), a real estate agent with AIDS, seeking a cross-country travel partner. On their journey from New York City to Los Angeles, the two stop by Pittsburgh to pick up Robin's friend Holly (Drew Barrymore), who is trying to escape an abusive relationship. With three distinct personalities, the women must overcome their differences to help one another.

It's My Party

Nick (Eric Roberts), a gay, HIV-positive architect, begins to display severe symptoms of AIDS and makes preparations to kill himself before he is unable to function normally. He arranges a party to reconnect and say goodbye to his closest friends and his confused parents. But when his ex-partner, Brandon (Gregory Harrison), a television director who left Nick when he was diagnosed with HIV, shows up, what was supposed to be a celebratory event becomes much more difficult for everyone.

Dallas Buyers Club

In mid-1980s Texas, electrician Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) is stunned to learn that he has AIDS. Though told that he has just 30 days left to live, Woodroof refuses to give in to despair. He seeks out alternative therapies and smuggles unapproved drugs into the U.S. from wherever he can find them. Woodroof joins forces with a fellow AIDS patient (Jared Leto) and begins selling the treatments to the growing number of people who can't wait for the medical establishment to save them.

Test

Set in the free-spirited San Francisco of 1985, Chris Mason Johnson's Test lovingly portrays this exciting and harrowing era as young Frankie (dancer Scott Marlowe in a breakout acting debut) confronts the challenges of being an understudy in a modern dance company where he’s taunted to “dance like a man!” Frankie embarks on a budding relationship with hunky Todd (Matthew Risch, HBO’s “Looking”), a veteran dancer in the same company and the bad boy to Frankie’s naiveté.

As Frankie and Todd’s friendship deepens, they navigate a world of risk — it’s the early years of the epidemic — but also a world of hope, humor, visual beauty and musical relief.

An Early Frost

Successful lawyer Michael Pierson (Aidan Quinn) is gay, but he has always hidden this part of his life from his mother, Katherine (Gena Rowlands), father, Nick (Ben Gazzara), and grandmother Beatrice (Sylvia Sidney). But when Michael discovers he has AIDS and is dying of complications from the disease, he must open up to his parents and the rest of his family. Though fearful of their reactions, he introduces them to his longtime lover, Peter (D.W. Moffett), and looks to them for support.

Others

Fear fuels HIV stigma. Others is a short film created by Casey house so that audiences would get a feeling for the impacts of stigma that people living with HIV face every day.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey (Steven Weber), a gay man living in New York City with an overwhelming fear of contracting AIDS, concludes that being celibate is the only option to protect himself. As fate would have it, shortly after his declaration of a sex-free existence, he meets the handsome Steve Howard (Michael T. Weiss), his dream man -- except for his HIV-positive status. Facing this dilemma, Jeffrey turns to his best friend (Patrick Stewart) and an outrageous priest (Nathan Lane) for guidance.

How to Survive a Plague

HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE is the story of the brave young men and women who successfully reversed the tide of an epidemic, demanded the attention of a fearful nation and stopped AIDS from becoming a death sentence. This improbable group of activists bucked oppression and, with no scientific training, infiltrated government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry, helping to identify promising new medication and treatments and move them through trials and into drugstores in record time. In the process, they saved their own lives and ended the darkest days of a veritable plague, while virtually emptying AIDS wards in American hospitals in the process. The powerful story of their fight is a classic tale of empowerment and activism that has since inspired movements for change in everything from breast cancer research to Occupy Wall Street. Their story stands as a powerful inspiration to future generations, a road map, and a call to arms. This is how you change the world.

Angels in America

At its core, it is the fantastical story of Prior Walter, a gay man living with AIDS who is visited by an angel. The film explores a wide variety of themes, including Reagan-era politics, the spreading AIDS epidemic, and a rapidly changing social and political climate.

The Normal Heart

The early days of the HIV-AIDS crisis in 1980s New York City is the focus of this searing drama. Adapted from Larry Kramer's Tony(R)-winning play, the film provides an unflinching look at the nation's sexual politics as gay activists and their allies in the medical community fight to expose the truth about the burgeoning epidemic to a city and nation in denial.

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt

A documentary that tells the stories of five people who died from AIDS and how their loved ones came to terms with their loss through participation in the AIDS Memorial Quilt. The huge quilt, made by friends and relatives of people who have died of AIDS, has traveled throughout the United States to raise money for AIDS research. The documentary makes use of interviews with families and friends, plus photos and home movies.

Longtime Companion

Longtime Companion chronicles the first years of the AIDS epidemic as seen through its impact on several gay men and the straight friend of one of them. The film is split into several sections identified by dates.

Parting Glances

As Michael and Robert, a gay couple in New York, prepare for Robert's departure for a two-year work assignment in Africa, Michael must face Robert's true motives for leaving while dealing with their circle of eccentric friends, including Michael's ex-lover, Nick, who is living with AIDS.

Paris is Burning

Paris Is Burning is a 1990 American documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it.

The Hours

The story of three women in different times, related only by a parallel in their personal lives. One, present day, throwing a party for a writer friend suffering from AIDS. Another living in 1949 Los Angeles, suffering as a young wife and mother. The last, Virginia Woolf, writing "Mrs. Dalloway" and contemplating suicide. Based on Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

The Living End

After a chance meeting, two aimless young men, both HIV-positive, embark on a casual affair, then go on the lam together after one of them murders a policeman.

Love! Valour! Compassion!

A group of gay New Yorkers -- including Buzz Hauser (Jason Alexander), an HIV-positive Broadway musical enthusiast; John Jeckyll (John Glover), a dry-witted British composer; and Gregory Mitchell (Stephen Bogardus), a prominent Broadway choreographer -- spend summer weekends together at a lakeside house in upstate New York. As the season progresses and secrets begin to surface, the complex relationships within the group are sometimes strained and sometimes strengthened.

Gia

She was one of the most beautiful and envied women in the world...and one of the loneliest. Angelina Jolie stars in this drama based on the tragic true story of Gia Carangi, the supermodel who dominated the international fashion scene of the late '70s until her drug-fueled lifestyle and unhappiness caught up with her.

We Were Here

During the 1970s, San Francisco became a safe haven for the gay and lesbian community, providing a place where one could live openly, away from discrimination. But, after almost a decade of celebration, the city was hit by a wave of shock and grief when it became ground zero of the AIDS epidemic, with hundreds of gay men falling victim to the disease. Director David Weissman explores the incredible story of love and loss through the eyes of five men and women who experienced it firsthand.

Philadelphia

When a man with HIV is fired by his law firm because of his condition, he hires a homophobic small time lawyer as the only willing advocate for a wrongful dismissal suit. Andrew Beckett, a young Philadelphia lawyer infected with AIDS, keeps his homosexuality hidden from his employers.

And the Band Played On

A deadly epidemic is spreading around the world. But when it first began, no one paid attention. Matthew Modine stars in this medical thriller as a young doctor tracking the disease halfway around the world and across two continents--and whose work is thwarted at every turn by fear, official indifference and bitter medical rivalries.