A nation. A town. Malawi. Nevertheless, the team that produced the documentary I Am Because We Are left these borders with a product that gives meaning to these words.

This film is about the African continent and its challenge to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in a region where some 2.5 million children suffer from the disease.

In the documentary that showed in the main hall of the National Theater, experts explained that Malawi is affected by several killer diseases such as malaria and typhus. Nevertheless, the fastest growing and deadliest illness in this country is HIV/AIDS because of the troubling fact that the country is not sufficiently open to talk about the disease. The silence and denial have made and maintain the disease an enigma.

Fred is one of millions of children in Malawi who lives with the disease and the hope that God will not take his life, as he did with his parents, leaving him to join the ranks of the “many orphans” that live in his village.

Former US President Bill Clinton, who appeared in the documentary, explained that the most viable solution to the problem is to empower the citizens in their role as social individuals so that they themselves will build the necessary structures for their own development.

It is in this very precarious situation when a mother has to embalm her 3-year-old son and place his remains in a common niche that hope is transformed into something unattainable and resignation of one´s fate takes over one´s entire life. A vision, therefore, is necessary - a sign of change which is the only solution offered by the experts in the documentary: “We change or we die,” because in Malawi, there is still strength.

Nathan Rissman, Director, and Madonna, writer and producer of the documentary seek to show that necessity can turn us into agents for change even in the face of this most horrible situation. The filmmakers do this through the stories of eight children who yearn for better lives and put every bit of themselves into making this happen, or at least to meet one of the goals they´ve set out for themselves.

Panel of Experts

Gustavo Rojas, Germán Agudelo, Patrick Donnelly

Following the showing of the film, a panel discussion was held with Gustavo Rojas, Director of the President´s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA); Germán Agudelo, representative of the NGO Population Services International (PSI); and Patrick Donnelly, Attorney from Crowell & Moring LLP.

Gustavo Rojas stressed that in order to contain the AIDS epidemic “we can´t expect individual solutions to collective problems,” because of the rapid spread of this illness, it cannot be analyzed from this perspective, he said.

Germán Agudelo added that while there may be more awareness among young people about the contagious nature of HIV/AIDS, there is a major change in the reduction of those affected by AIDS per year. He noted, however, that “a situation similar to the film can be seen in the poor neighborhoods of the Dominican Republic.

The last speaker, Patrick Donnelly, using updated data, spoke about the impact HIV/AIDS is having on Africa. He said that some 22 million people are now living with AIDS in Africa, of which 1.6 million die every year, “which means that some 250 people died during the time it took to watch the documentary we just saw,” emphasizing that these deaths are provoked mainly by the fear of discrimination.