Bending the Arc | |
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Directed by | Kief Davidson, Pedro Kos |
Written by | Cori Shepherd Stern |
Produced by | Cori Shepherd Stern, Executive producers: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck |
Starring | Jim Yong Kim, Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, Agnes Binagwaho |
Cinematography | David Murdock, Guy Mossman, Joshua Dreyfus |
Edited by | Pedro Kos, Yuki Aizawa |
Production company | |
Release date |
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Running time | 102 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Bending the Arc is a 2017 documentary film. It tells the story of Partners in Health and doctors and humanitarians, Jim Yong Kim, Ophelia Dahl, and Paul Farmer, who are devoted to innovative health care in impoverished nations. Directors Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos follow their ongoing struggle to treat and eradicate tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in rural areas of Haiti, Peru, and Rwanda. [1]
Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim met at Harvard Medical School in the 1980s and were both drawn to medicine by a shared desire for social justice. [2] Along with activist Ophelia Dahl, they decided to try and make quality healthcare available to those in poor countries. They raised funding and opened a clinic in rural Haiti, but realized they needed to incorporate more community work to realize their goals. Through dramatically increased cultural sensitivity, pointed listening skills, local partnerships, and home visits, treatment drastically improved, leading to Partners In Health. [1] [3] The film follows their story from their beginnings in Haiti, to treating multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis in Peru, and advocating for and implementing antiretroviral HIV therapy in Rwanda alongside Dr. Agnes Binagwaho.
The directors of Bending the Arc, Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos, primarily use a traditional documentary format, mixing earlier video footage and current interviews to tell the story of how Jim Kim, Ophelia Dahl, and Paul Farmer developed Partners in Health. Where they deviate a bit is in showing older footage to their protagonists, in order to elicit their present-day reactions.
The film has been screened at Sundance Film Festival, [1] Miami International Film Festival, [4] and the San Francisco Film Festival. [5]
At the Greenwich International Film Festival in 2017, it won Best Documentary Feature Film. [6]
Paul Edward Farmer was an American medical anthropologist and physician. Farmer held an MD and PhD from Harvard University, where he was a University Professor and the chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was the co-founder and chief strategist of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct health care services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. He was professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Partners In Health (PIH) is an international nonprofit public health organization founded in 1987 by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, Thomas J. White, Todd McCormack, and Jim Yong Kim.
Alight, formerly the American Refugee Committee (ARC), is an international nonprofit, nonsectarian organization that has provided humanitarian assistance and training to millions of beneficiaries over the last 40 years.
Jim Yong Kim, also known as Kim Yong (김용/金墉), is an American physician and anthropologist who served as the 12th president of the World Bank from 2012 to 2019.
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World (2003) is a non-fiction, biographical work by American writer Tracy Kidder. The book traces the life of physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer with particular focus on his work fighting tuberculosis in Haiti, Peru and Russia.
Ophelia Magdalena Dahl is a British-American social justice and health care advocate. Dahl co-founded Partners In Health (PIH), a Boston, Massachusetts-based non-profit health care organization dedicated to providing a "preferential option for the poor." She served as executive director for 16 years and has since chaired its board of directors.
Zanmi Lasante is a sister organization to the Boston-based Partners In Health that operates out of Cange in the central plateau of Haiti. The name, Zanmi Lasante, means Partners In Health in Haitian Creole. It was built in 1985 to treat patients who were incapable of paying hospital fees. Services cost the equivalent of about eighty American cents for everyone "except for women and children, the destitute, and anyone who was seriously ill." Additionally, no one may be turned away.
Joia Stapleton Mukherjee is an associate professor with the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Since 2000, she has served as the Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health, an international medical non-profit founded by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Kim. She trained in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and has an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Mukherjee has been involved in health care access and human rights issues since 1989, and she consults for the World Health Organization on the treatment of HIV and MDR-TB in developing countries. Her scholarly work focuses on the human rights aspect of HIV treatment and on the implementation of complex health interventions in resource-poor settings.
Anne-christine d'Adesky is an American author, journalist and activist of French and Haitian descent living in New York. She has maintained a deep relationship with Haiti, reporting the 2010 earthquake from a feminist angle, especially noting the impact of the disaster on the lives of teenage girls. She has also contributed to humanitarian projects in East Africa, as well as conducting extensive research into HIV/AIDS and its treatment worldwide.
With an estimated 150,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in 2016, Haiti has the most overall cases of HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean and its HIV prevalence rates among the highest percentage-wise in the region. There are many risk-factor groups for HIV infection in Haiti, with the most common ones including lower socioeconomic status, lower educational levels, risky behavior, and lower levels of awareness regarding HIV and its transmission.
Old Partner is a 2008 South Korean documentary film directed by Lee Chung-ryoul. Set in the small rural town of Hanul-ri in Sangun-myeon, Bonghwa County, North Gyeongsang Province, the film focuses on the relationship between a 40-year-old cow and an old farmer in his 80s.
Daniel Junge is an American documentary filmmaker. On February 26, 2012, he won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film Saving Face, which he co-directed along with Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Deepsouth is a 2012 American documentary film about the neglected HIV/AIDS crisis in the rural American South. Beneath layers of history, poverty, and soaring HIV infections, three Americans redefine traditional Southern values to create their own solutions to survive.
The 2016 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 21 to January 31, 2016. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 2, 2015. The opening night film was Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. The closing night film was Louis Black and Karen Bernstein's Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny.
University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) is a health sciences university in Rwanda. An initiative of Partners In Health, UGHE is a private, not-for-profit, accredited institution.
Jaime Bayona García is a Peruvian physician who focuses on public health and he has become a specialist in studying the epidemiology of tuberculosis. He is also known for his case studies on HIV/AIDS in Peru and other developing countries. Dr. Bayona has also done work on how public health systems should improve, in terms of providing the best approach to help the sick that cannot afford health care.
Thomas J. White was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was a co-founder of Partners In Health and estimated that he gave away more than $75 million to various charities.
Michelle Evelyn Morse is an American internist. She is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital and co-founded EqualHealth and Social Medicine Consortium. In 2021, Morse was named the first Chief Medical Officer of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Kief Davidson is an American filmmaker who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short at the 2013 Academy Awards for his work on Open Heart with Cori Shepherd Stern.
Pedro Kos is a Brazilian-American film director and editor. He has directed Bending the Arc (2017), Rebel Hearts (2021), Lead Me Home (2021), In Our Blood (2024), and The White House Effect (2024).