LOS ANGELES — A new documentary revisits the Sept. 11 attacks through the firsthand accounts of police officers, firefighters, EMS providers, survivors and family members whose stories show the courage and resilience that emerged from the tragedy.
But “The Heroism and Resiliency of 9/11: From Tragedy to Triumph” is not solely a retelling of the devastation.
Narrated by actor and longtime first responder advocate Gary Sinise, the documentary focuses on the courage, service and resilience that emerged at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and aboard United Airlines Flight 93.
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Director and producer Michael Gier said that he wanted the film to offer a different perspective from previous documentaries about the attacks.
“There have been a lot of movies made about 9/11, and so we don’t need to tell the same story,” Gier said. “I pitched the idea that we focus on the positive things that came from 9/11 despite the tragedy and tell some of the stories that people have never heard before.”
The result is a two-hour documentary that combines firsthand accounts, archival footage and dramatized reenactments. It acknowledges the magnitude of the loss while spending much of its time examining what responders did next.
First responders who relied on their training
Among the documentary’s central accounts is the rescue of Port Authority Police Officer Will Jimeno, who was trapped beneath the World Trade Center with Sgt. John McLoughlin after the towers collapsed.
Port Authority Police Officer Dominick Pezzulo, who was trapped alongside them, freed himself and began working to rescue the others before he was killed in a subsequent collapse.
The documentary also featured former New York state Paramedic Chuck Sereika, whose previous EMS training led him to Ground Zero and ultimately into the dangerous rescue effort beneath the rubble.
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NYPD Emergency Service Unit (ESU) Officer Scott Strauss (ret.) and other rescuers later worked through unstable debris, intense heat and fires to free Jimeno and McLoughlin.
The film depicts Strauss and his ESU partner, Patrick McGee, crawling into the wreckage despite the continuing danger of additional collapses. Strauss’ two sons later followed him into law enforcement and became members of the NYPD Emergency Service Unit.
Gier said the production built a set about 30 feet below ground in a Los Angeles studio to recreate the conditions Jimeno endured.
“It just helped people really see what was taking place rather than just hearing it,” Gier said.
The reenactments were added after Gier had already assembled an early version of the documentary. He said he wanted the scenes to help viewers understand the responders’ experiences without over-dramatizing them.
Firefighters and families carry the story forward
The documentary also features retired FDNY firefighter Jimmy Brown, a former NYPD officer who joined the fire department months before the attacks.
Brown was assigned to Engine 10 and Ladder 10, located directly across from the World Trade Center. He responded when the first plane struck and survived the collapse of the North Tower.
Another segment tells the story of Welles Crowther, the 24-year-old equities trader and volunteer firefighter remembered as “the man in the red bandana.”
Crowther repeatedly entered danger to lead people out of the South Tower. Survivors later credited him with saving numerous lives before he was killed when the tower collapsed.
The documentary also explores the lasting effects of the attacks on first responder families.
Cait Leavey was 10 when her father, FDNY Lt. Joseph Leavey, was killed on Sept. 11. She later dedicated her career to helping children who experienced trauma.
Gier said including Leavey’s account allowed the documentary to show how the attacks affected a younger generation and continued to shape lives long after the rescue and recovery operations ended.
How conditions affected responders and search dogs
The documentary also addresses the emotional toll of moving from rescue to recovery when relatively few survivors were found.
Retired NYPD Detective Michael Saxe, who spent about a month conducting search-and-rescue operations at Ground Zero, recounts how the conditions affected both responders and search dogs.
Gier said the documentary recounts how responders hid so the search dogs could successfully locate someone, helping lift the animals’ morale after days of searching Ground Zero.
The dogs’ paws were also injured by the hot, jagged debris, leading supporters to send protective booties so they could continue searching.
Gier said he included the account because it was one of several important contributions to the response that he had rarely heard discussed.
Stories beyond Ground Zero
The documentary expands beyond New York’s traditional public safety agencies to show how civilians and responders across the country mobilized.
It recounts the mass maritime evacuation of Lower Manhattan, the efforts of first responders and civilians at the Pentagon, and the actions of the passengers who fought back aboard Flight 93.
It also briefly tells the story of residents at a New York homeless mission who provided food, showers and clothing to people fleeing the World Trade Center area.
For Gier, those accounts illustrated how quickly social and political divisions disappeared as people focused on helping one another.
“It didn’t matter what your politics were,” he said. “Everybody was there for each other.”
The project began after SoldierStrong co-founder Chris Meek, who was in New York on Sept. 11, approached Gier following the attacks’ 20th commemoration.
Meek wanted to ensure the 25th commemoration included an effort to preserve firsthand accounts for people who were too young to remember the attacks or had not yet been born.
Gier began production in early 2022 and collected about 35 hours of interviews. Reducing those accounts to a two-hour documentary was one of the most difficult parts of the project, he said.
“This could have been a miniseries,” Gier said. “There were so many more stories.”
Untold stories
The film does not minimize the losses of Sept. 11. Its opening establishes the scale of the attacks, while the individual accounts recount the deaths of colleagues, family members and civilians.
The difference, Gier said, is that those accounts continue beyond the loss to show how responders, survivors and families moved forward.
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“I don’t want people to think it’s going to be a negative, depressing film,” Gier said. “They’re going to hear stories they’ve never heard, and they’re going to walk away feeling inspired.”
The documentary has received five best documentary awards at film festivals and is available to stream through Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google TV and YouTube Movies.
Gier said he hopes the stories will resonate with today’s first responders, who may one day encounter a crisis unlike anything they have previously experienced.
“They never know when they’re going to be involved in something huge that they’ve never experienced before,” he said.
