25 years ago this month, America and the world were shocked by attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that left thousands dead and the nation in mourning. The events of September 11, 2001, altered the course of American history forever. Now, ABC News is taking a look at the cultural response to its aftermath in a new documentary. 9/11: United We Stand — 25 Years Laterwill premiere on September 1 on ABC, and will be repeated on September 11. It will also stream on Disney+ and Hulu starting on September 2.
For a few days after September 11, 2001, the world came to a halt. TV series were preempted for news coverage for days, while the National Football League and Major League Baseball postponed their regularly scheduled games. However, before long, sports and culture went back to work, trying to navigate in a world that had drastically changed in the space of a few hours. The New York Yankees had an inspiring run to the World Series with a grieving city behind them, while political comedy returned to balance respect for the dead with criticism of the Bush Administration’s excesses. Meanwhile, artists raised millions of dollars for the families of the victims; some still fight to see that justice is done for the survivors.
9/11: United We Stand — 25 Years Later will feature voices from behind the scenes of the media’s response to 9/11. That includes Good Morning America anchors Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos, and ABC News chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz. How did comedy respond to tragedy? They’ll talk to The Daily Show host Jon Stewart, stand-up comedian and lifelong New Yorker Billy Crystal, and Saturday Night Live‘s Jimmy Fallon, who was one of the co-anchors of the show’s “Weekend Update” segment at the time, for the answers. To discuss how New York’s artisans stood up for the city, they’ll talk to rocker Jon Bon Jovi and actor Matthew Broderick, who was starring in the hit Broadway musical The Producers.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
What Athletes Are Interviewed in ‘9/11: United We Stand — 25 Years Later’?
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For insights from the sports world, it turns to athletes like New York Rangers legend Mark Messier, New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz, and New York Yankees great Derek Jeter. For the voices of those affected, and how devastation became inspiration, the documentary talks with Pete Davidson, among others; Davidson’s father, a firefighter, was killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center.
9/11: United We Stand — 25 Years Later will debut on ABC on September 1 and will be rerun on September 11; it will also stream on Disney+ and Hulu starting on September 2. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
9/11: United We Stand — 25 Years Later key art.Image via ABC News.
