Told through the eyes of an increasingly empowered heroine, The Carrier is a powerful and moving portrait of an unconventional family, set against the backdrop of the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia.
'The Carrier' is a feature-length documentary that tells the inspiring story of an HIV-positive and pregnant mother trying to protect her baby from being born with HIV/AIDS. The film follows a Zambian subsistence farmer named Mutinta who is part of a polygamous marriage where everyone is HIV-positive. With the dangerously high mortality rates for HIV-positive babies on her mind, Mutinta enrolls in an innovative public health program called Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT).—Anonymous
When 28-year-old Mutinta first narrates all the hopes and dreams she once nurtured as a child, her aspirations don't seem that different from many other young women around the world. She dreamed of meeting and falling in love with a handsome man, being married and raising children and one day providing those children with a better life than her own. But her soft spoken and idyllic husband came with two other wives, and the remote Zambian village in which polygamy is still legal and Mutinta calls home, is simultaneously being ravaged by a strange and deadly new epidemic, a disease known so ominously and mysteriously to its people as, "AIDS. Set against the backdrop of the world's most urgent and contemporary plague, Maggie Bettss THE CARRIER is a stunning portrait of both a family and a community caught in a desperate struggle to emancipate their next generation from AIDS. When Mutinta learns that she is pregnant with another child, she begins to recognize the quest to save her baby from her disease as the family's last hope for redemption.In its breathtaking visuals and unique lyrical style, THE CARRIER is a story of hope and renewal, of love and dignity, told through the eyes of an increasingly empowered young heroine who refuses to be undone by the forces that surround her. It is an inspiring testament to modern Africa, a proud people struggling to understand and ultimately persevere and overcome what has happened to their world.
