Zero Patience
Director: John Greyson
Writer: John Greyson
Cast: Normand Fauteux, John Robinson, Dianne Heatherington, Richardo Keens-Douglas, Bernard Behrens, Marla Lukofsky, Michael Callen
Seen on: 29.5.2026

Plot:
After he fell into the fountain of youth, Richard Francis Burton (John Robinson) continued working as a taxidermist in the Museum of Natural History in Toronto. Now he is planning a new exhibit about plagues, and what he would really like is to get his hands on the so-called Patient Zero who brought HIV and Aids to North America. Zero (Normand Fauteux) worked as a flight attendant. Now he is a ghost and quite curious to see what Burton gets up to, as there is no line that Burton won’t cross, no truth he won’t bend in pursuit of this exhibit.

I hadn’t planned on this kind of queer 90s cinema mini festival that I curated for myself but when I saw that a cinema in Vienna basically did the same and that I would be able to catch exactly one screening in their series, I had to go for it. I knew nothing about Zero Patience, I hadn’t even gathered beforehand that it was a musical, but it became an instant favorite, an absolute highlight, the climax and end (for now) of this mini festival. It was amazing.

Zero Patience is a weird film in the best way, starting with the fact that one of the protagonists is Richard Francis Burton, Victorian explorer famous for translating the Kama Sutra into English (among othert hings). It is the kind of film where it feels absolutely natural that the HI-Virus itself, aka Miss HIV (Michael Callen) would make an appearance to fact check some Aids myths from under the microscope. That they sing while they do it makes everything even better, and the music is really very nice.

In short, I had no idea what I was in for and the film took me on quite a ride – and I loved every second of it. It is honestly really funny and had me laughing my heart out, but it is also rightfully angry and determined to educate people, albeit in a very lighthearted way, about the utter bullshit that the idea of „patient zero“ was in the first place, and quite a few other rumors that floated around about HIV/Aids. Basically, you’d need to be an immoral almost 200 year old dude and quite literally a Dick to believe all of that stuff.

The film also includes the activism that sprung up pretty quickly, as well as what it meant to be living with HIV/Aids (and not just dying with it), giving a pretty comprehensive idea of what the discussions and experiences were at the time, amid the songs and the jokes. It’s a pretty delicate balance, but the film keeps it admirably.

My biggest point of criticism, maybe, was the romance between Burton and Zero, but I have to admit that with the character growth that Burton goes through, he kind of grew on me. And Zero and the exhibition getting the ending they deserve made the entire thing a thoroughly entertaining experience that I keep thinking about.

Summarizing: an absolute gem.