It is September 11 2001 and a young man goes missing in New York. Because of his Eastern name and his Islamic religion, he is suspected of being involved in the attack. The FBI inquire about him. The neighbours of his family show their disapproval. Eventually it transpires that, as a trained paramedic, the young man had rushed to the scene to help the survivors and had died doing so.
His true story, one of the many tales of heroism on that day, is the basis of Mira Nair’s contribution to 11’09”01, the title for 11 films by 11 directors of 11 different nationalities that, in 11 minutes and nine seconds each, consider the events of September 11. The directors include Ken Loach, Claude Lelouch, Mira Nair, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Sean Penn, and the countries represented include Egypt and Burkina Faso, Israel and Iran. Put together by French producer Alain Brigand, the films vary from the quietly reflective and personal to the more internationalist and polemical. All the contributions are provocative in different ways and at least four are real gems.
But while the film has been released in 17 countries and has won plaudits at film festivals around the world, the one major territory where it has yet to find a release is the United States. Nair, who feels passionately about the project, believes that there is an audience within the US that is hungry for such a film. She attended a screening of the film in front of 600 people at Columbia University in New York and says it was received with great enthusiasm.
”It was seen as a very brave and interesting film and there was a lot of discussion afterwards,” says Nair. ”It was a crowd that was hungry to know what the media doesn’t let us know in this country.” She believes there is a sizeable market for the film, which should allow it distribution on the independent circuit. ”But it’s hard because it’s an overtly political film,” she says, adding that the suggestion made by a reviewer in Toronto that the film was ”anti-American” was wrong. ”It’s a cheap shot to say that it’s anti-American,” says Nair, director of Monsoon Wedding, Salaam Bombay and Mississippi Masala. ”What it does is force you to reflect on 9/11 from other parts of the world.”
It was her screenwriter, Sabrina Dhawan, who came across the story of the lost paramedic that inspired the film, while Nair had been keen to tackle what she saw as a pervasive Islamophobia that followed the attacks. She had worked closely with the New York-based family of the dead young man and they had wanted his story told, she said, as a way of helping to counter some of the reactions. She and the family are going to Karachi for the showing at the upcoming festival there.
The US is represented in the film by Penn, who recently nailed his colours to the anti-war mast by placing a full-page advertisement in the Washington Post, attacking the idea of military action against Iraq. He has neither shied away from political controversy nor courted Hollywood’s approval, so he was, perhaps, an obvious choice to tackle the subject.
”I thought, what a wonderful chance to explore my own reaction, an opportunity I would wish for all people,” says Penn. ”After September 11, I cancelled a feature film I was about to make that, in context, was not relevant or had at least not been provoked by this new state of things. I wanted to take a deep breath and try to begin to understand what our new obligation would be.”
The result is a beautifully shot film featuring Ernest Borgnine as an elderly and confused widower who lays out his dead wife’s dress for her and remains locked in his own private grief and bereavement as the events of the day unfold, unnoticed by him on the television in his tiny apartment.
”The events of that day, tragic as they were, seemed to have been overwhelmingly co-opted by the media. And somewhere inside all of us, I think, is not only the recognition of the losses and impact of those horrifying events, but also of the mother who lost a son to a drunk driver on that day, to an overdose, a daughter to a murder, a father to an illness,” says Penn. ”Loss comes every day and pain follows it. The question has always been how to be at peace with today and believe tomorrow can be better.”
Perhaps the most harrowing episode to watch is that directed by Mexican director Iñárritu, who made Amores Perros two years ago. It shows, in greater detail that has been shown on television, people falling from the buildings, their arms and legs still waving as they plunge to their deaths.
”I wanted to express that this event is beyond politics, that it has more to do with the dark side of our nature,” says Iñárritu of his participation. Ironically, he had moved to New York with his family because it seemed safer than an increasingly violent Mexico City. ”It has more to do with Cain and Abel than with Bush and Osama. This is a problem of human beings projecting themselves, their fears and desires, through a God that has been deformed for their own convenience, and using him to justify their actions. This is something that is happening in the East and the West. It is about the emotional spirituality, the fanaticism, the fundamentalism, the nationalism and the misinterpretation that man has made of God’s light.”
He said that he wanted to avoid ”political gibberish and rhetoric”, but he was struck by the claims and counterclaims to good and evil. ”If you review the terminology of Bush’s speeches and Osama’s messages, it is scary because beyond reasonable fact, they were talking about good, evil and God, all of which are very vulnerable and subjective matters. So the question at the end is for both sides of the world.”
The film has had a mixed response from critics in the US, and one American film writer has said that he believes it is commercial rather than ideological concerns that have been holding back a cinema release. There is a market in the US for independent films that might be attacked for being anti-American — as Michael Moore has shown with the success of Bowling for Columbine. Now Nair and her fellow directors are hoping that someone else will follow suit and give 11’09”01 the exposure they feel it deserves — to help prompt a national debate that has still to take place. — Â