Broke was born out of necessity in some ways, it was a form of therapeutic processing built from an amalgamation of experiences myself and some of my closest peers had been through. Everything had always been football. After coming through the ranks at Tottenham Hotspur and playing professional football in the championship I suffered a serious injury and later fell out of the game at 23 years old. I underestimated how much my mental health and my identity would be confronted in the wake of laying to rest a dream I had been chasing since the age of six. I found it was almost like mourning the loss of myself, an idea of myself that everybody around me also shared. I was a footballer before I was anything else and I had to come to terms with what I am now without that. I was fascinated by the idea of that, it was an interesting process and one that is universal. When our dreams, our jobs and our passions consume our identity, when they begin to define us and our relationships, when they become the metric in which we judge the success and happiness of our lives it can be devastating and alien to lose. With this film I wanted to try and communicate those feelings specific to the world I was from. Football has notoriously always been an environment that doesn’t lend itself to the care of mental health or the safe guarding of its players, fortunately that is changing now. I wanted to make this film to raise awareness around mental health in football and the support needed for players falling out of the game at every level. It was really important to try and bring as much realism and authenticity to the film as possible which led to many of the lead contributors to the film being from the same world. Two of the lead producers, the lead performer, the composer and the majority of extras involved had all been through the football system and had experienced similar feelings. It was an absolute privilege to collaborate and bring this to life together.

Will is a self taught filmmaker, whose experience and background in professional football have figured heavily in some of his early work. Having played for Tottenham Hotspur & Burton Albion before leaving football at the age of 23 to pursue film making, his creative style and authentic experience of that world have led to directing the likes of the ‘This Is Football’ series for England and the ‘Playing For Change’ series with Adidas. In the advertising space, he has since gone on to work with brands such as EA, Arsenal and Sky. Having written and directed several short films he has quickly developed a style that is driven by curiosity, exploring social ideas and human behaviour through challenging metaphorical imagery.