Bill W.

Documentary • Unrated • Directed by: Unknown • 103 minutes

In 1999, Bill Wilson was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Heroes and Icons of the 20th Century for his role as co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. But at the very starting point of Wilson’s remarkable accomplishments, the thought of such an honor would have seemed like an absurd fantasy. Sixty-five years earlier, in December of 1934, he received a death sentence: confined to a drying out hospital for drunks, with a promising business career wrecked, deeply in debt, and a marriage battered by pain and disappointment, his doctor informed him and his wife that his uncontrollable drinking virtually guaranteed he would be dead in less than a year. From that point of true hopelessness, Wilson not only escaped his death sentence, he went on to create a program and fellowship that would allow millions of others to do the same. Few people ever live a life of such dramatic transformation; the documentary film Bill W. tells the story behind the one that defined Bill Wilson.