VIA APPIA

When Frank, a young German flight attendant, wakes up after a one-night-stand with a street hustler in Rio, he finds scrawled on the bathroom mirror, "Welcome to the AIDS club". Back in Germany, with the disease beginning to take hold of him, he decides to return to Brazil (with an accompanying film crew) to find the prostitute, having only his name, Mario, as a lead.

The grim search, all set in a film-within-a-film style, involves combing the sleazy bathhouses, back streets and even a beach known as the "AIDS Farm", enquiring after Mario's whereabouts.

He interviews various male prostitutes and lowlifes in what soon becomes, for Frank and his film crew, a meandering, exisistential odyssey.

With time running out, the young man's longing to find the "cause" of his impending death is both gut-wrenching and disturbing.

A powerful and suspenseful story filled with sexy images of an unapologetic hedonistic netherworld which continues unabated, despite the looming spectra of AIDS.