
The Fort Fisher Hermit
Robert Harrill lives for seventeen years inside an abandoned World War II bunker on the dunes at Fort Fisher, North Carolina, and becomes one of the state's odder tourist draws in the process. This film gathers the people who actually knew him, neighbors, visitors, local reporters, to describe a man dealing with homelessness and schizophrenia who nonetheless turned isolation into a kind of local celebrity, greeting strangers who drove out just to meet him. It sketches how he fed and sheltered himself in the bunker, what the crowds who found him were looking for, and how the town of Fort Fisher absorbed him into its identity rather than pushing him out. The back half turns to his death, which was ruled accidental but left enough unanswered questions that people who knew him still argue about what happened. Told mostly through interviews rather than reenactment, the film stays close to firsthand memory and lets the contradictions in those accounts stand rather than resolving them.