Tom Hanks marks 25th anniversary of Philadelphia with moving short film on AIDS
'It’s hard for people now to realize how intense that moment in time was'
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The stars of the 1993 film Philadelphia have come together to mark its 25th anniversary.
Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Mary Steenburgen appear in the trailer for The Last Mile, a short film which sees the stars share stories of the AIDS crisis and how the film helped tell those stories to the world.
“There was a tremendous amount of fear and a lack of knowledge. It’s hard for people now to realise how intense that moment in time was," Steenburgen says.
Hanks says: “Going in and out of New York City, you ended up seeing it all over the place ― men were pushing other men around in wheelchairs."
Hanks won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Andrew Beckett, a man who launches a discrimination case against his employer, after he was fired due to his status as an AIDS patient. It was one of the first Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, and homophobia.
The Last Mile will be released on 15 November. It was produced by Coca-Cola in partnership with the HIV/AIDS advocacy brand (RED), as part of the company's ongoing Project Last Mile, which aims to help improve health systems across Africa.
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