Worth(2020)

Submitted by Evil Ed

The film depicts how Kenneth Feinberg (Michael Keaton) administered the 9/11 Victims’ Compensation Fund.

The fund is set up by the U.S. Government after 9/11 to keep the victims from suing the airlines out of business. It required at least 80% of the victims’ families to sign up in order for funds to be distributed.

At first, Feinberg is not effective in persuading many families to participate because of his seemingly aloof manner, his plan to use a generic formula based on the victims’ income to determine the payout, and the efforts of Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci) who’s wife died on 9/11, and who rallies many families by building a website called “Fix the Fund”.

Eventually, Feinberg begins exercising the broad authority provided him to balance the distribution of funds distributed to the victims, deal with same-sex unmarried partners, a fireman with two children born out of wedlock, along with other cases that are not generic.

Just before the deadline Wolf declares “The Fund is Fixed!” on his website. A flood of victims’ families then apply for compensation. Unfortunately, a same sex partner of a victim in Virginia is not compensated because the Virginia State government refused to acknowledge their impending marriage.

Eventually, 97% of the eligible victims receive payouts, and Feinberg goes on to administer many other similar funds such as the Deepwater Horizon Fund, the Aurora Colorado Massacre fund, the One Fund after the Boston Marathon Bombings, and the fund set up by Boeing after the pair of 737MAX crashes.