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Documentary reviews, body neutrality, parenting, Jupiter, piano, cats, European history, ghosts, rodents, the collapse of civilization, and if this goes on long enough I'll probably end up cataloguing my entire smushed penny collection.

Documentary Review/ Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror

This is not a documentary about the attack on the twin towers on September 11, 2001.

You would be forgiven for thinking it might be. It opens with American 11 taking off from Boston on the morning of September 11, 2001. We all know where this is headed. I’ve watched a lot of documentaries about the September 11 attacks and my chest tightens with every second as the clock ticks up to 8:46 AM and then 9:03 AM. Every time.

You would be forgiven for continuing to think it was a documentary about September 11 as we hit all the mainstays of a 9/11 documentary: interviews with survivors, interviews with firefighters, audio from the hijacked plane (I hate this).

About twenty minutes into the film both towers are burning, American citizens are weeping in the streets of New York City, and we finally reach the opening credits: vaguely Middle Eastern music and a montage of pictures, one of which includes Ronald Reagan. This is about more than one day in September.

This documentary places the 9/11 terrorist attacks into historical context, going back to the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) and moving forward through time all the way through the 2021 withdrawal of United States armed forces from Afghanistan.

It is brutal. The Taliban, al-Qaeda, the hijackings, the War on Terror, Guantanamo, all of it. The documentarians are ruthless in uncovering the missteps that give shape to a tragedy which is still playing out in dark corners of the world. They do not hide their message: our government made mistakes that snowballed into the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Our government continues to make mistakes that will lead to more terrorism in the future.

I lived through most of the decades covered in this documentary, but seeing it all laid out like this really gives context to an event that, at seventeen years old, I didn’t even realize wanted for context.

This is not a documentary about the attack on the twin towers on September 11, 2001. It is much more than that. It gave me a lot to think about, but also gave me a lot of anxiety about the future. You should watch it.