The archive · Public & Social · Marketing decision · 2021
Santé Publique France has people with HIV write to younger selves to end stigma
Three people living with HIV read letters to their younger selves beside AI-animated images of who they were — proof that life went on.
Santé Publique France
What it had to solve
Thanks to treatments available today, a person who is HIV-positive can live a full and healthy life without transmitting the virus — but public perception has not caught up, so stigma still drives everyday discrimination and keeps people from getting tested. Santé Publique France wanted to change that perception.
How it works
Treatments now allow a person who is HIV-positive to live a full and healthy life without transmitting the virus, yet the public image of HIV is still stuck in the 1980s. That gap keeps fueling everyday discrimination and the reluctance to get tested, so Santé Publique France wanted to update what people feel when they hear 'HIV'.
Letter To Myself made the change visible through three real lives. Nicolas, Andréa and Christine traveled back — in a film — to the day they learned they were infected, each writing a letter to their younger self and reading it in front of the camera. Beside them, an image of that younger self, projected and animated with AI, listened to what the future had to say.
The device turned an abstract message about treatment progress into a concrete scene: the person at diagnosis meets the person they became. Released around World AIDS Day in December 2021 as part of the 'Living with HIV means living first' campaign, the film took a prize at the 2022 Epica Awards, won ACT Responsible's audience Coup de Cœur in 2023, and was recognized in D&AD's awards archive.
Why it lands
- Writing a letter forces the speaker to confront their own past, giving the film authenticity no scripted dialogue could match.
- Projecting an AI-animated younger self makes the passage of time — and the life that happened in it — physically visible.
- Using real people with HIV instead of actors makes the hope concrete: these are lives the diagnosis did not end.
- The emotional core works in any language, letting a French public-health film carry the message beyond its home market.
What it did
The device turned medical progress into three visible lives: each younger self watches the person they became. The film anchored Santé Publique France's HIV communication around World AIDS Day 2021, took a prize at the 2022 Epica Awards and ACT Responsible's audience Coup de Cœur in 2023, and was recognized in D&AD's awards archive.
What you can take
When public perception lags the science, do not argue with facts — show the distance between then and now: an AI-created encounter with a younger self makes progress feel personal.
Since then
Santé Publique France used Letter To Myself as the emotional centerpiece of its ongoing fight against HIV discrimination and testing reluctance, and the film became a reference point in French public-health communication for showing that life with HIV is a full life. It traveled the awards circuit — Epica 2022 winner, ACT Responsible's audience favourite in 2023, and a place in the D&AD awards archive — keeping the anti-stigma message circulating years after World AIDS Day 2021.
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