Dylan Mohan Gray’s Fire in the Blood is a crackling documentary that can’t be missed, especially for the gravity of its subject. It is an expose of Western pharmaceutical companies’ attempts to withhold low-cost antiretroviral drugs. The antiretrovirals are basic necessities for patients suffering from AIDS, especially so as there still haven’t been a cure for the great pandemic that was discovered in 1981.

A still from the feature documentary, Fire in The Blood

The documentary asks a host of valid questions. For whom are the medicines made? Who makes these medicines? Is illness a side effect of being poor? Reminiscent of Dallas Buyers Club, the feature documentary goes one step ahead beyond questioning medicines made by big corporates and generic medicines (the same formula outside the patent law) made in developing worlds such as India and Thailand. Several factors argue the documentary’s case in its favour.