Their Brothers' Keepers

Serving as an impassioned plea for Western altruism and medical egalitarianism regarding AIDS-ravaged Africa, this moving documentary personalizes the crisis by focusing on destitute children orphaned by the disease and left to raise their siblings in the parched villages and shantytowns of Zambia. Framed by footage from an exasperated speech by Stephen Lewis, U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, and interviews with other frustrated officials, the film cites heartbreaking statistics (850,000 AIDS orphans in Zambia alone) and notes the moral dichotomy of spending priorities in wealthy Western nations ($250 billion has been spent invading Iraq and Afghanistan, only a tiny fraction of that on African AIDS relief). But mostly director Catherine Mullins explores the lack of available treatments, documents attempts by aid workers to overcome stigmas, and follows 8-to-12-year-olds forced to run their households, pay rent, find food, and raise brothers and sisters. Their Brothers' Keepers would make an excellent companion piece to The Constant Gardener, this summer's unabashedly political thriller about big pharmaceutical companies taking advantage of the epidemic that has forced the children in this documentary to grow up too fast. Recommended, especially for those who do not own similarly-themed titles, such as Bullfrog Films' The Value of Life: AIDS in Africa Revisited (VL-3/05). Aud: C, P. (R. Blackwelder)