Karolinska Institute revises Hildebrand’s profile in AIDS archive
Tuesday 20th October 2026 on 20:00 in
Sweden
Karolinska Institute has changed how filmmaker Staffan Hildebrand is presented on the website of the Face of AIDS film archive, after questions from SVT about new allegations concerning him. The changes come after Hildebrand said in an SVT documentary that he paid young men for sex while working on a project documenting the HIV and AIDS epidemic.
In the series Pojkarna – regissören och sanningen (The Boys – the Director and the Truth), Hildebrand said he met several of the men through the project, including people who appear in its films. He said he could not rule out that someone was underage.
The documentation project began in 1987 at the request of Karolinska Institute, known as KI, and became the basis for the Face of AIDS archive. It contains almost 800 hours of documentary material and is used for research and education.
After SVT contacted the institute, two films featuring Hildebrand were replaced on the archive’s homepage, and his name was removed from the archive description. KI said the changes were intended to shift attention to people affected by HIV and AIDS and those who worked on the issue. The institute stressed that no films had been removed and that Hildebrand’s connection to the archive remained.
KI declined an interview. Before publication, the institute said it was not aware of information that people appearing in the films had been subjected to the acts described in the documentary. Asked about that statement after publication, KI’s press office said it had little to add beyond its earlier comments.
The institute also referred to previous positions from its ethics council and ethics committee, which it said confirmed the archive’s value for research and education. People featured in the archive can ask to be removed; KI said no one had done so.
Hildebrand received Hiv-Sverige’s Heders Red Ribbon award in 2020 for his work documenting the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Asked whether he should keep the award, the organisation’s chair, Eva Lilja, told SVT that, given what has emerged since 2020, he would not receive it today. The award no longer exists.