Alison Pill plays a lesbian activist in "Milk"

The new Gus Van Sant film about Harvey Milk is centered around one of the most important gay men in the last few decades. A politician who died standing up for the LGBT community, it was only a matter of time before a feature starring some of today's hottest (straight) male actors would play him, his boyfriends and his killer (him: Sean Penn, boyfriends: James Franco and Diego Luna, killer: James Brolin.)

But this is AfterEllen.com, after all, and we think there's someone else that needs to be recognized: Ms. Anne Kronenberg, Milk's original campaign manager, and an out lesbian, played in the film by 22-year-old Alison Pill. At the premiere over the weekend, the two walked together down the red carpet.

Kronenberg told the press:

I just saw the movie yesterday, and I still haven't recovered from it. Gus and the production team caught the era exactly. It's very accurate. What really comes across is that feeling of compatriots and being family that we felt.

Clearly, she approves.

As for Pill, who portrays Kronenberg as a sassy biker chick that believes strongly in Milk's cause, she told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Being out and being able to be gay has never been any kind of moral issue for the people in my life and my world. Working on the film reminded me of how much work there still is to be done. Look at Proposition 8.”

Pill doesn't play for our team (not many of the actors in the film actually do), but she seems to understand and appreciate what Milk and Kronenberg were fighting for, and how it affects California as well as the rest of the United States today.

Milk is very much centered around the man and his activism, and the men who aided him in being heard, but there were women there, too — women like Anne Kronenberg who were in the fight.

Look for an interview with Alison Pill on AfterEllen.com in the next few weeks.