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Original Film Title: Has Anyone Seen Bill?
Director’s Name: Bronwen J Carson
Writer’s Name: Bronwen J Carson
Producer: Bronwen J Carson, Guy Merritt, Mel Blackwell
Country of Origin: United States
Country of Filming : United States
Language: English
Runtime: 14 minutes 35 seconds
Film Description:
Has Anyone Seen Bill follows hard working, middle management Bill, a kind, 51-yr-old man whose obliviousness to the instability of employment in America sends him tumbling into homelessness after one bad decision.
Bill is a nice man who lives a solitary life after a rough divorce. He believes everything happens for a reason and that everything will work out…as long as you try, but as a sea of shiny new hires encroaches with a new self-organizing structure in the company he’s worked at for over a decade, Bill decides it’s time to pursue independent consulting.
Two months later, Bill’s prospects haven’t panned out and his rent and car payments have drained his bank account. Like 68% of working Americans, he had no savings.
As Bill tumbles through one-way socio-economic trap doors, his faith that things will turn around begins to falter. He moves out of the apartment he can no longer afford, and unable to meet the income requirements for another one, finds himself living in a local run-down motel. He takes any work he can get, mostly delivering meals and groceries.
His bank account overdrawn, he starts to sleep in his car, still believing he’ll be able to climb back out of the hard times. When his car is suddenly repossessed, he joins a small group of squatters and for a while has found a new kind of home with people who care about each other. But when a young squatter dies of pneumonia, the group splinters.
Bill is once more living a solitary life, now as one of over 35 million Americans living in profound, inescapable poverty.
Has Anyone Seen Bill delves into the complexities and misperceptions around housing insecurity, and how a perfect storm of inflation, job market viability, overpopulation, reprehensible wealth disparity, and affordable housing shortages has brought homelessness to the doorsteps of a staggering number of Americans.