Miss HIV launched all over...

Miss HIV explores the international collision of HIV/AIDS policies while following the journey of two HIV-positive women who enter the contest in Botswana. Filmed across Africa and the international AIDS conference in Toronto this explosive ethnographic film shares both sides of an ideology struggle. What is happening in Botswana, where half of all pregnant women have HIV, is set against Uganda who has experienced the largest reductions of new infections ever recorded. Unlike any film you've ever seen on AIDS, the story takes you backstage to the Miss HIV pageant and behind the curtain on what is really happening in the war against a virus that is now the leading killer of people under 60 in the world.

What is gradually revealed is, in part, the absurdity and hypocrisy of an ideology that is built upon the idea of radical human freedom, and that seeks to normalize HIV in order to erase "stigma", but that in turn stigmatizes anyone who even suggests abstinence or fidelity may be a solution to what is, after all, a sexually-transmitted disease.

As Martin Ssempa, the electric young Ugandan pastor who has been so instrumental in reducing HIV rates in his country, says, "You know what I find? I find that these guys have an irrational fear of abstinence. I mean they're paranoid. When you say the word abstinence they go 'Arraghagh! Stop!' And then, if you really want to get them riled up, say something about faithful in marriage. They want to pull their hair out!"