User:Zhengan/Sandbox/Bending the Arc

Bending the Arc is a 2017 documentary film telling the story of Partners in Health and doctors and humanitarians, Jim Yong Kim, Ophelia Dahl, and Paul Farmer, who have devoted their lives to innovative health care in the world's most impoverished nations. Directors Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos follow their decades long struggle to treat and eradicate Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in rural areas of Haiti, Peru, and Rwanda.

Synopsis
Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim met at Harvard Medical School in the 1980s and were both drawn to medicine by a shared desire for social justice. Along with activist Ophelia Dahl, they took on a seemingly impossible mission: to make quality healthcare available to everyone, even in the world's poorest countries. They successfully raised funding and opened a clinic in rural Haiti, but realized they needed to incorporate more community work to realize their goals. Through dramatically increased cultural sensitivity, pointed listening skills, local partnerships, and home visits, treatment drastically improved, and the revolutionary Partners In Health was born. They constantly challenged long-held views about global healthy policy held by governments and multi-lateral institutions, by insisting that health care must be a basic human right in every society. The film follows their story from their beginnings in Haiti, to treating multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis in Peru, and advocating for and implementing antiretroviral HIV therapy in Rwanda.

Production
The directors of Bending the Arc, Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos, primarily use a traditional documentary format, mixing earlier video footage and current interviews to tell the story of how Jim Kim, Ophelia Dahl, and Paul Farmer developed Partners in Health. Where they deviate a bit is in showing older footage to their protagonists, in order to elicit their present-day reactions. This results in some of the film’s most potent moments, as when they show Dr. Kim one of his early drug-resistant TB patient and then cut to images of this same man now healthy and thriving.

Release
The film has been screened at Sundance Film Festival, Miami International Film Festival , and the San Francisco Film Festival.