Yesterday

This is a moving docudrama from South Africa. You can order it from Netflix. It is impossibly sad, but unfortunately speaks truth.

From Netflix: "This heartfelt drama is the first Zulu-language film to be released internationally. Struggling to raise her daughter in a poor African village, Yesterday finds the odds stacked against her when she learns that she's HIV positive. With her husband in denial, Yesterday must somehow find the strength to go on, determined to live just long enough to see her daughter go to school." 2004 96 minutes

This is an online viewer's comments: "I will be candid and divulge my biases. I am a person with AIDS and cancer. I am 55 years old. I have seen most of the AIDS movies, made for better or worse over the years. I have no particular associations with Africa. A rare 10 vote goes to this film because it is, in its absolute simplicity, a perfect primer on the effects of AIDS on plain and simple lives. There are no greeting card sunsets. There are no weepy hand-holding scenes between the rich parent/spouse/sibling and "the victim" on the lawn of a palatial estate in America. There is exhausting repetition of the details of hard lives. There is the mean ignorance of people who see themselves as unaffected and superior. There is the sudden dependence of the counter dependent and unfaithful husband. There is the forgiveness by the infected wife, who already has too much to bear as an impoverished woman and mother. There is her faith, her dedication, her love to the end in a relationship that has brought her own early death. And there is the stark and indifferent beauty of Africa itself, photographed by a lover's eye. There are no surprises here for anyone. This is just a map to better understanding of a largely shared human condition." A viewer from Boston.