Tribute Museum on a piece that could explain to today’s children what happened and why on that infamous day. During her research for that documentary , she learned about “With Their Eyes,” a play that Stuyvesant students produced in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. She then reached out to the alumni involved in that production for her new one.
“The only times we hear about it are in a very punchline ‘post-9/11’ [way],” he says of the more mainstream coverage of late. “We use that term so often in the news and in the media that I feel we forget about what happened and the people that were lost and the families that were affected. We all have the footage. We all have seen it a million times. Some of us can’t even watch it anymore; it’s very hard for me to see footage from that day.
“I think this film really aims to remind people that it wasn’t just adults who were down there, that it wasn’t just first responders. Young people had legitimate stories to tell that are still legitimate stories,” she says. “For me, it’s been important to have an opportunity to re-face the things that I experienced and hadn’t thought about since that day.”
“Thinking about my own children, would I want them to basically feel how it felt to be a 13-year-old in the middle of this chaotic scene? Just thinking about those ideas for kids and how would that feel — that uncertainty, the fear, not even seeing the buildings crumbling or the people jumping but just the idea of, ‘Can I get home?’ I felt that those things were too difficult for a young audience,” she says.