55 Steps

55 Steps (2018) is a courtroom drama you can watch online on iFILM, pulled from a real legal fight in 1980s San Francisco. Psychiatric patient Eleanor Riese refuses the medication forced on her without consent and finds a lawyer willing to carry the argument all the way to a courtroom.

Taking the case is Colette Hughes, an attorney from a patients'-rights office. Eleanor scares her off at first with sharp outbursts and stubbornness, yet underneath sits a plain question: does someone locked in a hospital ward have the right to know what they're being given, and to say no? Hilary Swank plays the lawyer; Helena Bonham Carter is Eleanor — prickly, fragile, fiercely alive. The two of them carry the whole picture.

Danish director Bille August, twice a winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, keeps it quiet and unshowy, treating it as the story of two women who spent years building toward a ruling that reshaped how California's mental wards handle consent. Anyone who likes honest films about a small victory against a large system should settle in. Stream 55 Steps (2018) online on iFILM.