The "tough love" enemies of welfare and social services speak about personal responsibility and self-determination, the need for people who depend on public assistance to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and join the American workforce. But politicians on both sides of the aisle should be required to see Jennifer Dworkin's heartbreaking documentary Love And Diane, which shows how even the most tenacious fighters can get ensnared in the cruel vicissitudes of "the system" and their own tragic histories. Over several years, Dworkin followed the Hazzards, a desperately poor Brooklyn family headed by 42-year-old matriarch Diane, who was separated from her six children for more than five years while she contended with crack addiction and alcoholism. As the film opens, Diane has been clean and sober for nearly a decade, driven by a strong force of will and renewed Christian faith, but she has lost her eldest son to suicide and the others are scarred by their mother's neglect and their long stay at various group homes. Dworkin focuses on her troubled but loving relationship with 19-year-old daughter Love, who was the one that revealed Diane's drug addiction to an elementary-school teacher, prompting the state to break up the family. Shortly after reuniting with her mother, Love ran away from home and spent her late teens on the streets, where she contracted HIV and entered adulthood suffering from depression and a raging temper. History repeats itself again when Love's newborn baby Donyeah–who was born HIV-positive, but is cleared after treatment–is stripped from her after authorities determine that she's a neglectful and unstable mother. Stretched out over an engrossing and frequently moving 155 minutes, Love And Diane chronicles the two determined women as they try to wrest themselves from devastating cycles, haunted by looming personal demons and a fickle social system that presents more roadblocks than opportunities. With impeccable fly-on-the-wall style, Dworkin invades the suffocating space of the Hazzards' apartment, capturing domestic scenes that often boil over into something out of a John Cassavetes movie, charged with guilt over terrible mistakes and frustration over an uncertain future. As more disturbing revelations about their past comes to light, such as Diane losing her mother and most of her siblings to alcoholism or Love's nightmarish odyssey on the streets, Love And Diane emerges as an improbably hopeful tribute to the human spirit. Though redemption and happiness elude them at every turn, the Hazzards scrap mightily just to keep their heads above water, and their endurance and determination in the face of long odds is exceptionally inspiring.