September 11, when reality changed the world of cinema as well

Twenty-five years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the images of the Twin Towers continue to represent one of the most traumatic moments in contemporary history and the collective imagination. But how did cinema react to an event that the world had already witnessed unfold live?

Professor and former IULM Rector Gianni Canova discussed this topic in an interview with journalist Laura Longo for Rai News 24, reflecting on how American and international cinema has portrayed September 11 and its aftermath.

“Cinema experienced September 11 as a sort of trauma within the realm of fiction, following the trauma in reality,” explains Canova. The attack on the Twin Towers was, in fact, an event followed in real time on television and replayed countless times through media footage. Cinema was therefore also tasked with seeking out what those images had not shown.

This is what happens, for example, in Paul Greengrass’s *United 93*, which reconstructs the events aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers rebelled against the hijackers. The film attempts to imagine and reconstruct the final hours of those on board, their stories, and their communications with family members.

Among the works mentioned by Canova is Michael Moore’s *Fahrenheit 9/11*, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, which “had a powerful emotional impact” in its portrayal of the aftermath of 9/11 and the political climate that accompanied the subsequent wars.

Another significant film is Spike Lee’s *The 25th Hour*, a portrait of “an America that in some way implodes beneath the ruins, beneath the rubble of what terrorism has wrought.” Although it does not directly depict the attack, the film incorporates the city’s still-open wounds into its portrayal of New York.

The trauma of September 11 also changed the way destruction was depicted on the big screen. For a time, Hollywood avoided images that might too directly evoke what had happened in New York. Canova recalls the case of Sam Raimi’s *Spider-Man*: a promotional sequence in which Spider-Man spun a web between the Twin Towers was withdrawn after the attacks. However, a reference to the towers remained in the film—almost a trace of what no longer existed but would remain in the city’s memory.

According to Canova, this is precisely where one of the most profound differences lies between September 11 and the many catastrophes that cinema had previously imagined. “The trauma is that it’s all the work of humans. It’s not “them”—evil, green Martians—who are attacking us. It’s all done among ourselves. And that is traumatic.”

Twenty-five years later, cinema thus continues to be one of the tools through which to examine not only what happened on September 11, 2001, but also the images, fears, and transformations that event has left on contemporary culture.