A medical drama served up non-scripted style. 

It’s called The Waiting Room, an ITVS-funded, character-driven, cinema verité doc that, thanks to unprecendented access, takes the viewer inside the doors of an ER at an American public hospital struggling to care for a community of largely uninsured patients. 

It promises a raw, intimate, and uplifting look at how patients, caregivers and hospital staff deal with each other, illness, bureaucracy and hard choices.

Further…

The ER waiting room serves as the grounding point for the film, capturing in vivid detail what it means for millions of Americans to live without health insurance. Young victims of gun violence take their turn alongside artists and small business owners who lack insurance. Steel workers, taxi cab drivers and international asylum seekers crowd the halls. The film weaves the stories of several patients – as well as the hospital staff charged with caring for them – as they cope with the complexity of the nation’s public health care system, while weathering the storm of a national recession. The Waiting Room lays bare the struggle and determination of both a community and an institution coping with limited resources and no road map for navigating a health care landscape marked by historic economic and political dysfunction. It is a film about one hospital, its multifaceted community, and how our common vulnerability to illness binds us together as humans. 

As someone who’s previously been one of those many uninsured (and currently know many who are in that predicament), only visiting hospital emergency rooms when in dire need of care, I definitely want to see this.

Directed by Emmy-award winning African American documentarian Peter Nicks, the film made its debut in competition at the 55th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, last year, and will now make its broadcast TV debut on PBS, for those who have yet to see it (it had a very limited theatrical run earlier this year).

The Waiting Room premieres on Independent Lens tonight, Monday, October 21, 2013, 10-11:30 PM ET as part of the first PBS Indies Showcase (check local listings). 

Visit the The Waiting Room companion website (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/waiting-room), which features information about the film. It also features a talkback section for viewers to share their ideas and opinions, preview clips of the film, and more.

Check out the trailer below: