Silence = Death

2025

16min

On May 21, 1990, roughly 1,000 activists and members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) marched on the Bethesda, Maryland campus of the National Institute of Health to protest the lack of available drugs to treat HIV/AIDS. Dr. Anthony Fauci, then director of the NIAID (the AIDS arm of the NIH), watches as the activists march around his building, demanding inclusion in his clinical research committees. Meanwhile, a young gay filmmaker captures the events of the protest while attempting to deliver a package to Fauci. As the demonstrations threaten to upend the scientists' work, both men are forced to reckon with the meaning of power and responsibility.