THE Monday Special screening at City Screen, York, is Dylan Mohan Gray’s documentary tale of “medicine, monopoly and malice”, Fire In The Blood (PG).

Showing at 6pm, it looks at how western pharmaceutical companies and governments aggressively blocked access to low-cost AIDS drugs for the Third World countries of Africa and the global south after 1996 – causing ten million or more unnecessary deaths – and at the improbable group of people who decided to fight back.

Shot on four continents, the Sundance award-nominated Fire In The Blood features contributions from global figures such as President Bill Clinton, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Joseph Stiglitz in its account of the coalition that came together to stop “the crime of the century” and save millions of lives in the process.

As Mohan Gray’s film makes clear, however, this story is not over. Dramatic past victories have given way to serious setbacks engineered far from public view, meaning that the real fight for access to life-saving medicine may be just beginning.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion with Prof Karl Claxton and research fellow Paul Revill, from the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York, and Beth Hall of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines.

Michael Winterbottom’s Everyday (15), City Screen’s Sunday Special at 2pm, was filmed over a five-year period. This new British drama tells the story of Ian (John Simm), who is separated from his family while serving a long prison sentence, leaving his wife Karen (Shirley Henderson) to bring up their four children by herself. Using the rhythms and repetitions of everyday life, Winterbottom’s film focuses on the small, subtle changes as people grow up and grow old while being apart.

The Discover Tuesdays slot goes to Lenny Abrahamson’s Irish thriller What Richard Did (15) at 6pm. As the ominous title hints, all may not end well for apparently blameless popular boy Richard (Jack Raynor). He is loved by his teen classmates and his new relationship is blooming, until a drunken mistake sets his life on a nightmarish new path haunted by guilt and secrecy.

Abrahamson uses a cast of young unknowns and non-professional actors for a tense, elegantly crafted film that builds towards a quietly devastating conclusion as the ramifications of one mistake hit home.

Box office: 0871 902 5726 or picturehouses.co.uk/york