When Andrew Durham was searching for financing for “Fairyland,” his film adaptation of Alysia Abbott’s memoir about growing up in San Francisco with her gay single father and the impact that the AIDS crisis had on the community of LGBTQ Bohemians who populated her world, he received a shocking rejection.
“In a meeting, somebody told me verbatim that AIDS is passé,” Durham remembers. “I had to keep reminding people that stories about AIDS have been told, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t keep talking about that time and offering different perspectives.”
After years of struggle to bring the movie to life, “Fairyland” will have its premiere on Friday at the Sundance Film Festival with a cast that includes Scoot McNairy, Geena Davis and “CODA” breakout Emilia Jones. And the finished film does exactly what Durham said it would — tell the story of those plague years not only from the perspective of the people who were robbed of their lives, but the loved ones who were impacted by their deaths.