Director Dylan Mohan Gray’s Fire in the Blood picked up the Feature Documentary Award at the 2013 DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver on Sunday (May 12).

The film examines how pharmaceutical giants and Western governments have blocked access to low-cost AIDS drugs in Africa and features interviews with Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu and Joseph Stiglitz.

“I have been deeply moved by the messages and feedback I have received from numerous friends and strangers in Vancouver, even before winning this prize, and it is an absolute thrill to know that our film has touched such a nerve there,” Mohan said in a statement.

“The characters of Fire in the Blood are living proof that it is possible to do the unthinkable, to take on the most powerful governments and corporations on the planet, and – if the cause is just – to change the world.”

Antoine Bourges’ East Hastings Pharmacy, about local methadone clinics, picked up the Colin Low Award for Canadian Documentary; Kacper Czubak’s 18 kg, about a little boy battling HIV, won the Short Documentary Award; and Jeanie Finlay’s The Great Hip Hop Hoax, about a pair of Scottish rappers that reinvent themselves as West Coast MCs, won the inaugural Nigel Moore Award for Youth Programming.

Organized by Vancouver-based non-profit The Documentary Media Society, the 12th annual DOXA festival ran from May 3 to 12 and featured 74 screenings. The event concluded with a gala presentation of Ryan White’s Good Ol’ Freda, a doc about the Beatles’ friend and secretary, Freda Kelly.