I have seen this documentary a couple of times, and have been equally spellbound and touched both times.
Film makers Gedeon and Jules Naudet and James Hanlon happen to be on New York's Engine 7, Ladder 1 firehouse in Lower Manhattan, just next to the Twin Towers, making a documentary about the firefighters. They are filming on 9/11 and are suddenly captured and capturing the events very much in the middle of everything.
This documentary not only catches the chaos and horror of the event up close, but also takes its time to let the firefighters talk about their experiences. The bad ones of the fire, the effort to get into and up in the buildings, the falling bodies, the collapses and the whole catastrophe itself. But also the relief of meeting colleagues after the collapses where all firefighters of the firehouse miraculously survived (their words, not mine).
The event, the aftermath and the whole effort of looking for survivors and cleaning up is covered very close and very touching - not to mention the interviews made with the men years later, where the deeply rooted traumas still effect their lives. The film also covers another aspect of the event: the health problems that the firefighters suffer because of the dust and smoke that they were exposed to during their work on September 11th 2001. It has a slight tendency to become sentimental towards the end, but nothing bad and nothing over the top.
I certainly don't enjoy seeing this terrible event rolled out again or hearing the stories of the many horrendous experiences, but as a documentary this gets as close to both the people and the incident as it's possible. The footage from the day itself shot with a shaken camera through a lens covered in dust from the fire and the collapse is just amazing – fascinating and terrifying at the same time.
Altogether a well made documentary.
