Philadelphia (film)

Philadelphia is a 1993 American legal drama film directed and produced by Jonathan Demme, written by Ron Nyswaner, and starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. Filmed on location in its namesake city, it tells the story of attorney Andrew Beckett (Hanks) who comes to ask a personal injury attorney, Joe Miller (Washington), to help him sue his former law firm, who fired him after discovering he was gay and that he had AIDS. The cast also features Jason Robards, Mary Steenburgen, Antonio Banderas, and Joanne Woodward. Philadelphia is one of the first mainstream Hollywood films not only to explicitly address HIV/AIDS and homophobia, but also to portray gay people in a positive light. It premiered in Los Angeles on December 14, 1993, in a benefit for the AIDS Project, and opened in limited release on December 22, before expanding into wide release by TriStar Pictures on January 14, 1994.