无花果树 (2009)

Drenched in equal measures of joy and grief, this documentary opera - a tribute to the warrior saints of AIDS activism - will make you weep, rage, and sing, maybe all at once. Director John Greyson gleefully riffs on Gertrude Stein's subversive 1934 opera, Four Saints in Three Acts, to create a glorious mélange of palindromes, saints and criminals and a cameo by Queen West's albino squirrel. Winner of a Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, the film features Toronto's Tim McCaskell, one of the founders of AIDS Action Now, who has been living with AIDS for 25 years and South Africa's Zackie Achmat. HIV-positive, Achmat began a treatment strike in 1999, refusing to take life saving anti-retrovirals until they were accessible to all South Africans. With beautiful rage and a resplendent score by collaborator David Wall, Greyson takes aim at the political vacuum and outrageous greed of pharmaceutical companies that allowed millions to die when they could have lived.