Film · 2019

Choose Life: Edinburgh's Battle Against AIDS

This landmark documentary examines the ten years between 1979 and 1989 when Edinburgh faced a frightening new epidemic and was dubbed the ‘Aids capital of Europe’. Meeting the doctors, heroin addicts, police and locals caught up in events they could barely understand, this documentary reveals how events thousands of miles away had a massive impact on Scotland’s capital. The film captures the sense of panic as the mysterious new disease terrifies the general public and hears from medical professionals who raced against time to attempt to discover how the disease was being spread. Hearing from the police officers who seized needles from addicts as evidence, believing it a necessary tactic in the 'war on drugs', to those in the community who desperately pleaded for needle exchanges to thwart the spread of infectious diseases, this documentary reveals the battles that were raging in the streets of Edinburgh and the corridors of power.