Liu Ximei , the activist at the movie’s center, contracted the virus as a girl. Now in her 30s, she ran a halfway house for fellow patients. She serves as a thorn in the side of government officials who would rather wish this public-health crisis away. In the tensest development she comes under the supervision of a local surveillance official, who we’re told at one point is alarmed to learn that she has absconded to Geneva to talk with the Joint United Nations Program on H.I.V./AIDS.

Ximei ’s stealthy excursion to Switzerland is the sort of development a filmmaker usually captures only by hanging around. It is clear that Andy Cohen, who made the movie over seven years (Gaylen Ross is credited as co-director, and Ai Weiwei as executive producer), took the time to get to know his subject. We learn about the time when Ximei lived in a hospital with mainly dogs and cats to keep her company, and how she reunited with her biological mother. This isn’t a groundbreaking documentary, but it does pay its subjects the ultimate courtesy, treating them as officials have not: as fully rounded human beings.

Ximei

Not rated. In Mandarin and regional Chinese dialect, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes.