It really is a race against time, because it’s the 1990s, the AIDS epidemic is raging in France cloaked in the silent acquiescence of the government and pharmaceutical industry. Parisian ACT UP activists try to break through that silence with rallies, marches and vigils.

120 Beats Per Minute is filled with passion and fury, a portrait of youth’s encounter with death, a full-throated politically-charged film that includes a love story. It is also a collective image of a generation, maybe the last of its kind, that passionately believed in the possibility of change and that politics had to be fought for in the streets. Winner of the Cannes Grand Prix (Pedro Almodóvar headed the jury that year), Campillo’s work revisits the 1990s when the director was an ACT UP activist and lost his partner to AIDS.

Cannes IFF 2017 – FIPRESCI Prize, François Chalais Award, Grand Prize of the Jury, Queer Palm
European Film Awards 2017: 2 nominations (Best European Film of the Year, Best European Actor of the Year: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), award in the Best Editing category.
San Sebastian International Film Festival 2017: Special prize
The best film of the All About Freedom Festival, Gdańsk