“Who’s going to love me?” Asks D’Eva, a Latina, transgender woman living with HIV. In this film, D’Eva shares her story of tragedy, love, and triumph. She talks about how she was sexually assaulted, how she was diagnosed with HIV, and how, with the help of family and friends, she has recovered from both.

As the film unfolds, so do the facets of D’Eva’s life. Her home, her work, her family. The effect is an intimate portrait of a woman who has faced the challenges of HIV, threats from those she considered friends, and the misguided ideas that others place on transgendered people.

Through it all, D’Eva becomes someone who, against all odds, lives her truth every day. Someone who is worthy of love and health. And someone who, as she says, is “taking her power back.”

Our director search started with the assignment we gave ourselves: create a new cultural touchpoint for HIV. One that moves away ideas AIDS and death, to the truth, that people can, and do, triumph over their diagnosis.

The directors brought a strong, cinematic eye to the stories of everyday people, living and thriving in the face of HIV and in defiance of cultural expectations.

Rather than back away from the stigma of HIV and the socially charged environment in which it exists, the director took every opportunity to showcase the things that made our people human and worthy of love and health. The words, the details, the moments are all real.

What the audience sees are the stories of the people themselves in all their unvarnished, powerful, and human truth: that you can love who you are and that HIV can’t change that.

U.S. healthcare advertising is heavily regulated. Advertising must meet the parameters of a product’s government-approved prescribing information. Advertising is subjected to several rounds of review by the advertiser’s medical-legal board. If approved, advertising is filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. TV networks must also approve prior to broadcast.

Our audience is patients. In the U.S., an HIV diagnosis carries a sense of shame that prevents people from seeking treatment: ~50% are not on treatment. Seeing others, like those in our work, living healthy lives with HIV, lets patients know that they, too, are worthy of treatment and health.