1993 legal drama film by Jonathan Demme
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. It grossed $206.7 million worldwide, becoming the 9th highest-grossing film of 1993.
The film was positively received by critics for its screenplay and the performances of Hanks and Washington. For his performance as Andrew Beckett, Hanks won Best Actor at the 66th Academy Awards, while the song "Streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen won Best Original Song. Nyswaner was also nominated for the Best Original Screenplay, but lost to Jane Campion for The Piano.
In 2025, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.