Staffan Hildebrand looks back on his 25 years of documenting the HIV and AIDS epidemic for the Face of AIDS Film Archive. The film portrays a shift from pessimism towards a growing optimism in the response to HIV and AIDS.

Marc Girard who is the general director of the Mérieux Foundation, talks about Cent Gardes and the collaboration between France and the USA, mainly represented by the Pasteur Institute and NIH, and about why HIV is such a complicated virus to find a vaccine for.

Dr Robert C Gallo talks about the importance of yearly AIDS congresses. He also talks about the scientific community before and during the AIDS epidemic, and puts the disease outbreak into a sociological context.

Opening of the Cent Gardes Conference in Annecy in 2002. Speeches by the Director of Fondation Mérieux, Alain Mérieux, and participants from other institutions working on HIV vaccines. The film maker Staffan Hildebrand holds a speech about Face of AIDS.

The primary focus of this documentary is on the history of how the AIDS epidemic started in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York in 1981. Many different stories are told about people affected or surrounded by HIV and AIDS in the early years of the epidemic.