Freeheld

When police lieutenant Laurel Hester battled cancer, she didn't bargain for another titanic struggle: to leave her earned pension to her domestic partner. With less than six months to live, Laurel refuses to back down when her elected officials — the Ocean County Freeholders (New Jersey) — deny her request, which is routinely granted to heterosexual married couples. Freeheld's nail-biting political fight plunges us into the middle of a hot issue: as Laurel's plight worsens, it spurs a media frenzy and a passionate advocacy campaign. But it also is invested with tremendous personal detail: Wade documents a loving couple on the verge of losing each other.

Waiting Room: Launderette (dir. Colm Martin, 29 min.) finds visual poetry in a British laundry which attracts all comers — Martin treats the business as a confessional and wrings out one personal revelation after another from the varied characters who come to do their wash. (PS)