La crise du sida ou la fureur de vivre

Two major films of French cinema take us back to the 1980s and 1990s when AIDS, the grim reaper, brutally struck the LGBTQ+ community. In Les nuits fauves (1992), Cyril Collard, himself infected, depicts with a kind of lyricism of despair his condition and the last years of his life (he died a few months after the film’s release). More recently, 120 beats per minute (2017), by Robin Campillo, recalls with passion the circumstances surrounding the birth and the fights of the militant group Act Up-Paris. On the agenda: emotion and the feeling that other urgent battles remain to be fought.