Brian Knappenberger’s latest documentary, Turning Point: Generation 9/11, is difficult to sit through — as any honest film about Sept. 11 and its aftermath would be. But its emotional weight is matched by its purpose. The documentary offers a sobering, deeply human look at how a defining national tragedy shaped a generation that was too young to fully grasp it as it happened.
The film, part of Knappenberger’s Turning Point series and a continuation of the themes explored in 2021’s five-part Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror, turns its attention to those who were children on Sept. 11, 2001 — old enough in some cases to retain only fragmentary memories, and in others too young to remember the terrorist attacks at all. Through devastating footage from the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania crash site of United Flight 93, Knappenberger reconstructs the terror and confusion of that morning with painful clarity. He then follows the long shadow cast by the attacks, tracing consequences that stretch from the 20-year war in Afghanistan to the fractures of modern American politics, while never losing sight of the individual trauma left behind.
Much of the documentary’s power comes from its interviews. Knappenberger sits with people whose lives were altered by 9/11 in different ways, allowing their memories and grief to unfold without easy answers. Their stories are often devastating. Among the most affecting are these:
Michael Smoak
Smoak was just five years old on 9/11. Home sick from school that day, he remembers watching his grandparents respond in shock to the news unfolding on television. As he grew older and came to understand what had happened and why, he felt compelled to serve, eventually joining the Marines. In 2021, his squadron was deployed to Kabul during the United States’ full military withdrawal from Afghanistan, a chaotic moment that coincided with the Taliban’s return to power. At the Kabul airport, desperate Afghan civilians crowded in hopes of fleeing the country. Smoak was there when an ISIS suicide bomber set off an explosion that killed 169 Afghan civilians and 13 American service members, including several of his closest friends.
Jenny Pachucki
Pachucki was 21 on Sept. 11, 2001. An oral historian, she later curated audio recordings for New York City’s 9/11 Memorial and Museum. In one especially wrenching scene, she struggles to hold back tears while describing firefighters shaking one another’s hands before entering the World Trade Center, aware they might not come out alive. The documentary includes portions of the recordings she helped gather: eyewitness accounts from people who saw the planes strike the towers, calls from those trapped inside the buildings, and final messages from passengers aboard United Flight 93. One call ends with the sickening sound of a tower beginning to collapse. For viewers too young to remember 9/11, these moments cut through history’s distance and bring the personal devastation into sharp, unforgettable focus.
An Nguyen
Nguyen was four when he was boarding the bus for preschool and his father, Khang Ngoc Nguyen, rushed out the door for a last-second kiss goodbye. It was the last time An saw his dad. Khang was a Vietnamese citizen who escaped Saigon after it fell to American forces in the Vietnam War. An says his father was a poster child for the American dream: An immigrant who worked hard after arriving in the U.S., studying engineering and eventually landing a job as an electrical engineer for the government. Khang was at the Pentagon on 9/11 when terrorists crashed a plane into the building, killing him and 124 others.
Laurel Homer
Homer was still in diapers on 9/11 – 10 months old. She only remembers her father from photographs and stories. LeRoy W. Homer, Jr. was the co-pilot of Flight 93, which was hijacked by terrorists who intended to crash into the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.; flight personnel and civilians rushed the cockpit and diverted the plane, which went down in Pennsylvania, killing 44, including four hijackers. Laurel shares how she has always felt an empty space where her father should be, and how she’s been cruelly harassed by internet trolls who believe the events of 9/11 were faked. She wrestles with the conflicting emotions of losing her father despite the fact that it was for the greater good, the turn of events on the plane preventing further death and destruction. Her voice cracks as she says she feels shocked that she “made it out” of the aftermath, having been through such a harrowing ordeal at such a young age.
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Obaidullah Durani
Durani was 11 years old and living in his home country of Afghanistan on 9/11. He speaks about living in the closed-off society enforced by the Taliban. Citizens didn’t realize the attacks occurred until the U.S. military arrived in the country, initiating a war and searching for 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. The U.S. soldiers were greeted as heroes, further fueling Durani’s dream to become a fighter pilot, fulfilled after he moved to America, got his training, and returned to Afghanistan to fight against Taliban forces. As the American occupation dragged on, Durani got married and started a family – a family that was torn apart at the Kabul airport in 2021. He and his children escaped to America. His wife is still in Afghanistan, suffering under the oppressive Taliban regime.
Wyatt Wilson
Wilson was three years old on 9/11. He joined the Marines not because of 9/11, but to fight ISIS, which he cites as the difference between his generation and those who fought in the 2000s, the early days of the “global war on terror.” The first shot of Wilson makes you wonder: What is that big scar on his neck? He, Smoak, and Christian Sanchez, another participant in this doc, were among the Marines sent to Kabul in 2021 to facilitate order at the airport. They were not only undertrained for the situation, but were ordered to work with Taliban forces, the same people they used to shoot at. The scene was chaotic even before the suicide bomber arrived.
When the explosive went off, Smoak describes seeing a severed arm flying through the air, and finding the body of his best friend, Cpl. Daegan Page. Sanchez was shot in the shoulder amidst the turmoil. Wilson was 10 yards from the blast – with a collapsed lung and a variety of other debilitating injuries, he crawled over the corpses of friends and colleagues and laid down on the ground, convinced he was a goner. Sanchez saw medics wheel Wilson out. Wilson wasn’t breathing, but was saved by doctors, hospitalized and intubated. That’s where the scar came from. We see Wilson today, playing with his children, his pregnant wife nearby.
Mohammed Razvi
Razvi owned two small businesses in New York City on 9/11. His Pakistani family immigrated to the U.S. when he was seven – “The first thing I did was eat pizza,” he said. He describes the devastation he felt when ash blackened the sky and covered people, the buildings, and streets. Not long after, he had to reiterate the fact that he was an American when others in his neighborhood began to ask, “Why did your people do this?” He shares how his daughter was harassed and assaulted at school because she’s Muslim.
Azmat Khan
Khan experienced similar antagonization as Razvi – she was 16 on 9/11, and recalls how she and her sister, the only Muslims in school, were sent home early that day as school officials feared for their safety. She talks about “the real spread of the cycle of violence” as America started wars in the Middle East. Now she’s an investigative journalist for The New York Times Magazine, and has traveled to Afghanistan to report on the citizens’ experiences of the war and Taliban rule. She hopes her work cuts through the melee of modern journalism, so much of which has become untrustworthy, and the propaganda put forth by the U.S. government.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.