User Reviews

As an HIV Educator at Youth Services BUreau working within a youth-focused context, I believe that the film Positive Youth from Border2Border entertainment tells an extremely important story. Four youth from diverse backgrounds who are either infected with or affected by HIV candidly discuss their experiences both with the virus and the stigma attached to the virus. Interspersed with these gripping first-hand stories, we hear from medical professionals and counselors who work with HIV positive people who contextualize these individual stories within the framework of larger population trends. The film provides the opportunity to connect a human face to the disease and for youth, a population with a growing incidence of new diagnoses of HIV, to contribute their experience and voices to the ongoing dialogue.

The film was balanced in providing the message that HIV is a manageable, chronic illness but that people should make choices to reduce their risks, when possible. It also did an excellent job of demonstrating the challenges of dating when living with HIV and showcased the touching and courageous stories of several couples of differing HIV statuses who chose love over fear.

I will continue to use this film in my educational work to create dialogue around HIV with youth populations, and I highly recommend the film to people who might be considering it. This story needs to be heard! Alisa McClain - Youth Services Burea of Ottawa

Positive Youth was a great documentary that presented very interpersonal stories about young adults that are infected or affected by HIV. It was very educational, very emotional, and very inspiring to see the young people in this movie that have this virus and were still so positive about life, and were not letting HIV define them or prevent them from going after their dreams and falling in love. Speaking of falling in love, the documentary did a fantastic job displaying the lifestyle of a HIV youth in perspectives to dating which one would think would extremely difficult. However, the film shed an entirely different light on the issue and was really inspiring to see open-minded people falling in love with the person and not being scared away from their romantic desires because of HIV.

I give this film an "A" overall because it was very eye opening, and really inspiring to see such positive people in what many would consider to be grim circumstances. I had wished this film divulged the parents reactions when they found out their child was HIV positive, because the film discussed how difficult it was on the parents but there were no parent testimonials in the film. I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to see this movie at the Phoenix Film Festival. There were numerous people in the film in attendance and there was a question and answer segment after the film which really added to the experience and the amazingness to this film. I wish everyone would see this film, because it would help eliminate the negative stigma that follows HIV.

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