
Buyers Club
Hepatitis C infects an estimated 71 million people worldwide, and for years the only approved treatments were grueling and often ineffective. This short film follows patients and activists who bypass pharmaceutical companies entirely, importing generic antiviral drugs from countries where they are made cheaply and legally, then testing them independently to prove they work. Interviews with people living with the virus lay out what a diagnosis meant before affordable cures existed: liver damage, fatigue, and treatments that failed as often as they succeeded. The film traces how patient-run networks, some operating in legal gray zones reminiscent of the real-life buyers clubs of the HIV/AIDS era, source medication directly and share dosing information outside official medical channels. It raises a pointed question about who gets access to a cure and why price, not biology, decides the answer. The result is a compact look at how ordinary people organized around a treatable disease when the official system priced too many of them out.