A young couple struggling with homelessness fight to find a home and keep their family of six together, even when “support systems” try to break them apart.
Parents Isabel and Michael recast living in a car as an extended camping trip for their young family of six – watching movies and roasting marshmallows in the car, barbecuing in parks, showering in rest stop bathrooms. Michael makes $3,200/month as a driver for a cooking-oil collection company in San Francisco, where a two-bedroom apartment is $4,500/month. While housing assistance is readily available for single-parent families, people struggling with addiction or domestic violence, Isabel and Michael can’t imagine splitting up their family. When living in the car finally becomes untenable and there’s no hope in moving off housing assistance waitlists, their youngest – Robyn – begins questioning everything. As reality comes crashing down, they find community with anchor-outs – who are living rent free on boats, anchored offshore in Richardson Bay, surrounded by million-dollar mansions along the shore. Juxtaposing Isabel’s real-world perspective as she tries to preserve her children’s innocence with Robyn’s imaginative internal world, we witness the invisibility of family homelessness and their journey to keep their family together at all costs. WHAT YOU’LL REMEMBER is inspired by a true story and birthed from a short documentary that premiered with The New York Times Op-Docs in July 2021.
