Netflix has drooped a new trailer for a highly anticipated documentary, “Turning Point: Generation 9/11.”
Twenty-five years after 9/11, this documentary explores how a single day shaped the next generation. From children who lost their parents in the attacks to journalists who cut their teeth on the original War on Terror to young Afghans and Marines forced to deal with the fallout of America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan – their gripping stories reveal that the legacy of 9/11 is measured not only by history, but by the lives it continues to shape.
This is the next installment in the Turning Point franchise following “Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror,” “Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War,” and “Turning Point: The Vietnam War” from director Brian Knappenberger, who recently directed “The American Experiment.”
September 11th was more than a terrorist attack, it was a turning point in history. A single, bone-chilling morning forced Americans to confront something they had rarely experienced on their own soil: the terrifying realization that their country was vulnerable and that the world had changed before their eyes. Our response transformed us. It ushered in two decades of conflict, expanded surveillance, accelerated the rise of a new digital information battlefield and forced us to grapple with difficult questions about privacy, freedom, and fear.
On the first anniversary of September 11th, I was in Kandahar, Afghanistan, making a film about the country’s reconstruction. It was an extraordinary moment. The Taliban had been driven from power, and Afghanistan seemed to be in the midst of a profound transformation. Long-forbidden freedoms were beginning to return, especially for women and girls. Twenty years later, the Taliban would reclaim the country.
Now, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th, we are approaching the point where more than half of Americans were either born after the attacks or were too young to remember them. Yet the legacy of 9/11 still looms large in their lives, from families who lost loved ones, to the journalists who came of age covering the wars that followed, to an entire generation of service members, including those tasked with carrying out the chaotic and tragic withdrawal from Kabul.
Generation 9/11 focuses on the generation that has no living memory of September 11th, yet has inherited a world profoundly shaped by the decisions made in the uncertain days and years that followed. It began with an unimaginable catastrophe. But the echoes of that day continue to shape the politics, technology, and conflicts of the twenty-first century.”
-Brian Knappenberger, Director and Executive Producer.