''Fire in the Blood'' is a 2013

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

Dylan Mohan Gray Dylan Mohan Gray is an Indian and Canadian filmmaker. His documentary feature film '' Fire in the Blood'',http://fireintheblood.com premiered in competition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and went on to enjoy the longest theatrical run of ...

depicting what it claims is the intentional obstruction of access to low-cost

antiretroviral drug The management of HIV/AIDS normally includes the use of multiple antiretroviral drugs as a strategy to control HIV infection. There are several classes of antiretroviral agents that act on different stages of the HIV life-cycle. The use of multi ...

s used in the treatment of

HIV/AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ...

to people in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and other parts of the global south, driven by multinational pharmaceutical companies holding

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

monopolies and various Western governments (above all those of the United States,

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

and Switzerland) consistently supporting these companies. The film claims that the battle against what it refers to as a "genocidal blockade," which it estimates to have resulted in no less than ten to twelve million completely unnecessary deaths, was fought and (at least temporarily) won. ''Fire in the Blood'' features contributions from former US President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

, intellectual property activist James Love, global health reporter Donald McNeil, Jr. of ''

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'', HIV/AIDS treatment activist

Zackie Achmat Abdurrazack "Zackie" Achmat (born 21 March 1962) is a South African activist and film director. He is a co-founder the Treatment Action Campaign and known worldwide for his activism on behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa. ...

, pioneering generic drug maker

Yusuf Hamied Yusuf Khwaja Hamied (born 25 July 1936) is an Indian scientist, billionaire businessman and the chairman of Cipla, a generic pharmaceuticals company founded by his father Khwaja Abdul Hamied in 1935. He is also an elected fellow of the Indian ...

, former

Pfizer Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfizer ...

executive-turned-

whistleblower A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...

Peter Rost, Ugandan AIDS

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

Peter Mugyenyi, and

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

-laureates Desmond Tutu and Joseph Stiglitz. The film is narrated by

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

-winning actor

William Hurt William McChord Hurt (March 20, 1950 – March 13, 2022) was an American actor. Known for his performances on stage and screen, he received various awards including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award and Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor. H ...

, who lent his voice to the film on a '' pro bono'' basis because he felt the story and subject matter were so important. In November 2013, ''Fire in the Blood'' set a new record for the longest theatrical run by a non-fiction feature film in India: five weeks.Bolly Spice, 2 November 2013: ''Indian documentary Fire in the Blood breaks record for longest run in Indian cinemas''
Re-linked 2014-11-01 In November 2018, Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker

John Pilger John Richard Pilger (; born 9 October 1939) is an Australian journalist, writer, scholar, and documentary filmmaker. He has been mainly based in Britain since 1962. He was also once visiting professor at Cornell University in New York. Pilge ...

included ''Fire in the Blood'' among his selection of "26 landmark documentary films of the past seven decades."

Production

Filmmaker

first learned of the issue in 2004, after he read an article in ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...

'' about the battle between pharmaceutical companies and the global public health community over access to lower-cost AIDS drugs for Africa. He decided to make the film three years later. The film was shot on four continents from March 2008 to the end of 2010, while editing was completed in 2012.

Release

The film was first released theatrically in Ireland on 21 February 2013, with the UK premiere the following day. It was released theatrically in the US on 7 September 2013 and in India on 11 October the same year, to outstanding reviews.Official website: ''Reviews''
Re-linked 2014-11-01 The film was released on the iTunes UK Store in mid-2013, and worldwide on VOD via its website in 2014. It released in the UK and India on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

in the first quarter of 2014. Thus far the film has been broadcast on

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

in the following countries, beginning in late 2013: Finland (

YLE Yleisradio Oy ( Finnish, literally "General Radio Ltd." or "General Broadcast Ltd."; abbr. Yle ; sv, Rundradion Ab, italics=no), translated to English as the Finnish Broadcasting Company, is Finland's national public broadcasting company, found ...

), Israel (

Yes (Israel) yes ( he, יס), formally incorporated as D.B.S. Satellite Services (1998) Ltd ( he, די.בי.אס. שרותי לווין (1998) בע״מ), is the sole direct broadcast satellite television provider in Israel. It broadcasts multichannel TV and ...

), Norway (

NRK NRK, an abbreviation of the Norwegian ''Norsk Rikskringkasting AS'', generally expressed in English as the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, is the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, and the largest ...

), Spain ( TVE), Switzerland ( SRF), Austria (

ORF ORF or Orf may refer to: * Norfolk International Airport, IATA airport code ORF * Observer Research Foundation, an Indian research institute * One Race Films, a film production company founded by Vin Diesel * Open reading frame, a portion of the ...

), Poland (

Telewizja Polska Telewizja Polska S.A. (; "Polish Television"; TVP), also known in English as the public Polish Television is a Polish state media corporation. It is the largest Polish television network, although viewership has been declining in the 2010s. Sinc ...

), Ireland (

TG4 TG4 ( ga, TG Ceathair, ) is an Irish free-to-air public service television network. The channel launched on 31 October 1996 and is available online and through its on demand service TG4 Player in Ireland and beyond. TG4 was formerly known ...

), Brazil (

Globosat Globosat, was a Brazilian pay television content service, part of Grupo Globo. Established in 1991, after the creation of subscription television services in Brazil, with 29 channels and over 1,000 employees, it is the largest pay television c ...

), Denmark ( DR), the United States ( Audience Network) and Japan (

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

). Transnational broadcasters include AJE,

Al Jazeera Arabic Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazeera M ...

and

Al Jazeera Balkans Al Jazeera Balkans (AJB) is an international news television station headquartered in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina aimed at the media markets of the countries that used to be constituent units of SFR Yugoslavia. It is part of the Al Jazee ...

, along with DStv and GOtv across Sub-Saharan Africa as part of the "AfriDocs" initiative. ''Fire in the Blood'' was the first Indian film to be selected for the World Cinema Documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival and subsequently participated in over 100 leading

film festivals A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upo ...

in dozens of countries all over the world.Official website: ''Festivals''
Re-linked 2014-11-01

Awards and nominations

* Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, World Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, January 2013Official website: ''Awards News''
/ref> * Shortlisted for the One World Media Award, February 2013 * Winner of the Justice Matters Award at the 27th Washington DC International Film Festival, April 2013 * Winner of the DOXA Feature Documentary Award at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival, May 2013 * Shortlisted for Best Cinema Documentary at the Grierson British Documentary Awards, July 2013 * Winner of the

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung The Friedrich Ebert Foundation (''German: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung e.V.; Abbreviation: FES'') is a German political party foundation associated with, but independent from, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Established in 1925 as the ...

Prize for Political Film at

Filmfest Hamburg FILMFEST HAMBURG is an international film festival in Hamburg, the third-largest of its kind in Germany (after Berlin and Munich). It shows national and international feature and documentary films in eleven sections. The range of the program stret ...

, October 2013 * Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 16th Fairy Tales International Queer Film Festival in Calgary, June 2014 * Winner of the Best Documentary Award at the International Film Festival of Kashmir (IFFK) in Srinigar, August 2014 * Winner of the Grand Jury Award at The White Sands International Film Festival, New Mexico, September 2014 * Winner of the Best Feature Documentary Award at the Montréal International Black Film Festival, September 2014 * Winner of the IDPA Gold Award for Excellence in Nonfiction (Direction), 11th Indian Documentary Producers Association (IDPA) Awards, Mumbai, March 2015 * Winner of the IDPA Silver Award for Excellence in Nonfiction (Script), Mumbai, March 2015 * Winner of IDPA Jury Awards for Excellence in Cinematography (Jay Odedra), Excellence in Sound Design (Kunal Sharma), Mumbai, March 2015 * Winner of IDPA Jury Award for Best Film: Documentary over 30 Minutes, Mumbai, March 2015

Critical response

''Fire in the Blood'' received positive critical notices, both to its North American premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, as well as to its subsequent theatrical releases in Ireland,

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

, the United States and India. The film

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

has given ''Fire in the Blood'' a "92% fresh" rating based on 24 reviews as of January 2014. This ranks the film within the 5-10% best-reviewed films of 2013. Certain critics, such as Gary Goldstein of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'', while acknowledging the enormous importance of the topic, felt the film should have taken a more emotional approach to its "incendiary subject". The English critic Philip French, in his review for ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

'' described the film as "quietly devastating", praised Gray's choice in avoiding a

polemical Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics ...

tone and allowing the material to speak for itself. Writing in ''

Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...

'', Ashley Clark called ''Fire in the Blood'' "stirring" and added "Gray deserves credit for his own restraint... Such is the clarity of his ideological stance that any grandstanding would feel redundant." David Rooney of ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...

'' echoed this view, stating that "the admirable balance between impassioned argument and clear-sighted reporting in Dylan Mohan Gray's chronicle of the why and how makes ''Fire in the Blood'' indispensable viewing", adding that the "very smart", "extremely moving" film is "a shocking account of international trade terrorism sanctioned by Western governments" and "a powerful documentary that demands to be seen by as wide an audience as possible."

Other reactions

Author

John le Carré David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 193112 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré ( ), was a British and Irish author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. ...

(who became involved with the issue of pharmaceutical company abuses while researching his landmark 2001 novel ''

The Constant Gardener ''The Constant Gardener'' is a 2001 novel by British author John le Carré. The novel tells the story of Justin Quayle, a British diplomat whose activist wife is murdered. Believing there is something behind the murder, he seeks to uncover the t ...

'') called ''Fire in the Blood'' "a blessing... full of conviction, passion and unanswerable argument". Australian-British journalist and documentary film maker,

wrote "''Fire in the Blood'' is one of the most powerful, important and humane documentaries I have ever seen. It's the story of ordinary people standing up to unaccountable power. The struggle to save millions from the ravages of untreated HIV is revealed as a struggle against the new lords of the world, transnational corporations, their greed and lies. Genuine hope is rare these days -- you'll find it in this film." Former (2001–06)

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis said "I was enraged as I watched, thinking of those years I spent as the Envoy, watching people die...I rarely watch 'AIDS documentaries'; they're remarkably repetitive as a rule, largely uninspired and yielding almost nothing new. ire in the Bloodis in a wholly different category; a terrific, riveting documentary...dramatic, compelling, but most of all, wonderfully humane. ray isa remarkably gifted documentary film-maker."

Special screenings

Special screenings of ''Fire in the Blood'' for policymakers have been held in such fora as the

headquarters in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, the

World Health Assembly The World Health Assembly (WHA) is the forum through which the World Health Organization (WHO) is governed by its 194 member states. It is the world's highest health policy setting body and is composed of health ministers from member states. Th ...

and

UNAIDS The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) (, ONUSIDA) is the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The mission of UNAIDS is to lead, strengthen and support an ...

headquarters in

Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...

, along with dedicated screenings for lawmakers in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

and

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament Ho ...

, and one hosted by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) for ambassadors and consuls accredited to India.

Milestones

* (November 2013) ''Fire in the Blood'' sets a new all-time record for the longest theatrical run by any non-fiction feature film in Indian history * only feature-length Indian film to be selected in the main competition at a Top 5 international film festival between 2010 (

Peepli Live ''Peepli Live'' is a 2010 Indian satirical black comedy film that explores the topic of farmer suicides and the subsequent media and political response. It is written and directed by Anusha Rizvi in her directorial debut, and produced by Aami ...

) and 2014 ( Liar's Dice)

References

External links

Fire in the Blood, official website
* {{IMDb title, 1787067, Fire in the Blood Indian documentary films 2013 films Pharmaceutical industry 2013 documentary films Documentary films about health care Indian political films Documentary films about HIV/AIDS Politics of science Documentary films about science Works about patent law Desmond Tutu Bill Clinton 2013 directorial debut films Cultural depictions of Indira Gandhi 2010s English-language films HIV/AIDS in Indian films