Worth

Director: Sara Colangelo
Screenwriters: Max Borenstein

Institute History

  • 2020 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Following the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Congress appoints attorney Kenneth Feinberg (Michael Keaton) to lead the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. But how can he put a value on the lives lost? Caught between lawyers looking to sue and airline lobbies anxious to settle, Feinberg must broker a deal with the victims’ families. When he locks horns with Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci), a community organizer whose wife died in the towers, Feinberg begins to learn the human costs of the tragedy.

Sara Colangelo, whose film The Kindergarten Teacher took top directing honors at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, returns with the tough-minded true story of the legal struggle that followed in the wake of 9/11. Worth takes a hard look at the political machinations behind the fund and examines the cold calculus used to assign a value to the victims. Keaton brings gravity and wit to his portrayal of the real-life Feinberg, and Amy Ryan gives a quietly moving performance as his dogged deputy.

— M.C.

Screening Details

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