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This project successfully funded on 17th November 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
THE INVOICE: Settling the Debt with Black America
Alameda County, United States
Aim
Our company is producing a nonfiction film about the theft of Black America’s share of our nation’s wealth and how we settle the debt.
We are a team of veteran media professionals that includes Co-Producers David Lent and Troy Jones, Executive Producer Susan Burgess-Lent, Field Producer Ronna Fleischman, and Director of Photography Trudy Hutcherson,. 
SYNOPSIS
For over 250 years, the U.S. government engineered policies that extracted staggering wealth from Black Americans.
THE INVOICE investigates this ongoing financial crime and pursues the evidence that proves the debt—and asks how America can finally pay up.
The film approaches American racial injustice as the longest-running heist in U.S. history: a coordinated transfer of wealth, sanctioned by federal authority.
In 90 minutes, THE INVOICE traces the criminal paper trail—from slavery to segregation to today’s discriminatory algorithms—revealing how federal policies enabled the plunder of Black labor, land, wages, and opportunities while enriching white citizens and institutions.
Viewers witness whistleblowers, scholars, survivors, and forensic economists examine the crime scene and tally the damages. The Invoice positions reparations not as charity, but as restitution—payment on a long-overdue bill.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Like any crime investigation, THE INVOICE follows the money.
We expose:
* the legal mechanisms that enabled generations of theft
* repeated cover-ups and missed opportunities to repair the harm
* the modern systems that continue extracting wealth today
Rather than targeting individuals, our cameras turn toward a more elusive perpetrator: the federal machinery itself—legislators, courts, agencies, and programs whose fingerprints appear across centuries of inequality.
STYLISTIC APPROACH
* Archival footage paired with noir-style dramatizations
* Evidence boards and timeline animations tracking unlawful enrichment
* Interviews as testimony—expert witnesses explaining the crime
* Comedy as subversion—levity that disarms and invites viewers closer
Each of the six chapters ends with an itemized “invoice” tallying the monetary damages uncovered so far.
In 2024, the team raised $27,000 to produce a trailer to explain THE INVOICE to potential buyers. The funds we are now raising will be used to pay costs of intensive marketing efforts, engaging a celebrity narrator, and producing additional interviews.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made