A quick search shows the 2002 film September 11 has never been reviewed on this site, which certainly surprised me. I've known about it since its release. Because it was partially British-financed, I half expected it to turn up last week amongst the various 9/11 programs, but it didn't.
I set it to watch off German television. With the help of a Sight and Sound summary, I managed to follow it. Since it was filmed in a number of languages, it was shown with subtitles rather than the usual annoying German dubbing.
It left me feeling so very, very angry, not so much regarding the event itself, but what some very well known filmmakers had made of it. I could well understand its never showing on television in the States, but I could be wrong.
French producer Alan Brigand came up with the wheeze that he would approach eleven leading directors from around the world and ask each of them to film a segment lasting exactly 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame — depicting their take on the disaster. In order of their presentation, I will attempt to briefly summarise the results.
From Iran, young Samira Makhmalbaf portrayed a teacher attempting to describe the day's events to a group of young Afghan refugee children who had no concept of towers or airplanes or any understandable motive to take part in a minute's silence.
French director Claude Lelouch used the occasion as a mawkish reconciliation between a deaf woman in New York who is oblivious to the events being shown on her unwatched television and her dust-covered returning lover.
Egyptian director Youssef Chahine used an actor to play himself and viewed the occasion as an opportunity to recall the ghosts of an American soldier killed in Beirut some years before and a young Arab suicide bomber, as well as to catalog a dossier of American-inspired deaths and invasions over the years.
From Bosnia, director Danis Tanovic had the rather muted story of how a monthly march by the women of the community commemorating a 1995 massacre was not postponed by the news from New York.
The jolliest mediation came from Burkino Faso and director Idrissa Ouedraogo. A young schoolboy with an ailing mother thinks he has spotted Osama bin Laden. With his pal, he plans how to spend the 25-million dollar reward.
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