My Own Country

  In the mid 1980s, doctor Abraham Verghese brought his family to Johnson City, Tennessee from India.  He soon found himself in the middle of a developing AIDS epidemic.  Acclaimed director Mira Nair helmed this gripping drama about the foreign doctor in rural East Tennessee, who treated the first AIDS patients diagnosed there. The victims include a conservative Christian couple who have hidden their disease for fear of rejection, as well a trucker's wife who has contracted the disease from her husband. Nair focuses not only on how the victims and their families react to their disease, but the impact it has on Verghese, whose struggle to contain the virus consumes him, often at the expense of his family. A powerful and moving drama that is made all the more poignant by the knowledge that it is a true story.