So when is the last time you attended a film where the entire audience wept, applauded and stood in spontaneous ovation? Such heartfelt reactions occurred July 1 at the New York Asian Film Festival’s screening of the groundbreaking movie My Brother Nikhil. It is, hands down, one of the finest gay/AIDS-themed films I’ve ever seen.

Sometimes a familiar tale, told from a twice-removed, culturally distant perspective, can enlighten in a special way. For American gay men, especially those who lived through the U.S. AIDS crisis, My Brother Nikhil is striking in its ability to reawaken important, albeit painful, memories of all kinds: the social and familial situations we lived through as queer youth; our own 30-year-old AIDS crisis here in America, and our early response to that crisis--confusion, outrage, hopelessness. Then there is the struggle and awkwardness of having to be the bearer of such uncomfortable tidings for mainstream society--namely that they needed to wake up and recognize the reality of both the disease, and of our gay existence.

Shot entirely on location, the story of My Brother Nikhil unfolds in the Indian province of Goa between the years 1987 to 1994. Nikhil Kapoor is the all round Goan state swimming champion. His proud father has brought him up to be a sportsman/swimmer. His mother dotes on him and his elder sister is his closest friend. Handsome, jovial and charming, he is the idol of his peers and his friends love him. It is the picture of the perfect happy family.

But all this changes on August 8, 1989, when Nikhil is arrested and imprisoned in solitary confinement in a run-down government sanitarium, because his swim team health exam has revealed he is HIV-positive.

As My Brother Nikhil filmmaker Onir puts it, “This film tells the story of a man who suddenly falls from grace and is socially ostracized. His parents, friends and colleagues all turn their backs on him as his whole world collapses. It is also about how relationships redefine themselves in times of crisis; about parents who are unable to face social humiliation and abandon their son; about a son’s remorse at being rejected by his parents and of his longing for their love; about his quest to achieve something in life, and to be loved; about a sister who defies her parents and stands by her brother, caring for him and protecting him with unconditional love; about a gay relationship that withstood social disapproval.”

The film’s action seems to take its measured pace from recurring visual imagery of the slow, swollen, undulating ocean waves that roll endlessly just off this quiet Goan seaside port. Nikhil swims through them, they wash up just off the family home, and all cast members appear at the seashore intermittently throughout the story. For this film, one could say that the endeavor of swimming through oncoming waves is an allegory for one’s struggle through life’s adversities.

There is a Wagnerian size and feel to the overall movie (including an extended, “Liebstod” type finale), and the large, wide feel of its motion works well. As in well-realized Wagner, My Brother Nikhil doesn’t succumb to rushing itself just to get by.