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 The film, screened during the first week of the Cannes Film
Festival, tells the story of Ward 5B at the San Francisco
General Hospital, the first specialist care unit for people with
HIV/AIDs in the United States.
In an interview with Reuters at Cannes, Moore, 58, said she lost
a friend to the virus just after graduating from college.
"It was the end of 1984 and it was a friend who had gone to
Mexico, and everyone said he had caught the flu - and he died
two weeks later and I was shocked," Moore said.
Later on the actress, whose best known films include "Magnolia"
and "The Hours", came to help care for an AIDS sufferer at a
care unit in New York where friends and family were allowed to
come in look after patients.
"By 1985 a lot of people I knew were sick ... and by 88 I was
caring for somebody in a ward...I saw this movie and was so
incredibly moved," she said.
The film delves into how nurses who saw a rise in patients with
the condition decided to set up a care center, dismayed by the
lack of humanity many were shown at the time.
Cliff Morrison - one of the driving forces behind the treatment
center where the staff ignored ideas of clinical detachment and
had physical contact with patients - said fear about the
epidemic and suspicion about how it spread was one of the
hurdles carers had to deal with.
"All of a sudden I found myself at a cocktail party and someone
asked me what I did and everyone just spread back," Morrison
told Reuters, as he discussed the film with Moore.
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Dan Krauss, who co-directed the film with Paul Haggis, said '5B' had
a message for modern day viewers.
"It's about compassion and it's about dignity and it's about
respect," Krauss said.
"If we can inject that into the national conversation inside the
United States and elsewhere I think we will have accomplished
something needed right now," he said.
Every year movie stars, models and the super rich attend a major
HIV-AIDS fundraising event during the Cannes Film Festival, the
AmfAR dinner, put on by the U.S.-based Foundation For AIDS Research.
This year's event on May 23 comes after an HIV-positive man in
Britain became the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of the
AIDS virus, according to his doctors, after he received a bone
marrow transplant from an HIV-resistant donor.
(This story corrects second mention of nurse's name.)
(Writing by Sarah White; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
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