The first feature film to address the events of 9/11 opened in New York on Wednesday, leaving some audience members sobbing and the rest in shocked silence.
United 93, by the British director Paul Greengrass, opened the Tribeca Film Festival, and the evening began like any other premiere, with a red-carpet procession of celebrities -- including Robert De Niro, Steve Buscemi and Gabriel Byrne -- and attendant TV cameras and gawking passers-by.
But joining them in the 1,600-capacity Ziegfeld Theater was a group who gave the event a more somber tone: about 90 people who lost family members when a United Airlines plane crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, killing all 33 passengers and seven crew members, as well as the four hijackers.
Standing ovation
The relatives were given a standing ovation after Jane Rosenthal, co-founder of the festival with De Niro, said that she hoped the film could be part of a "healing journey."
"This movie tells the story with so much dignity," said Gordon Felt, who lost his brother Ed. He said he was "speechless" at the degree to which the film-makers had involved the families, and thanked Universal Pictures for donating 10 percent of the profits from the film's opening weekend to the fund for a permanent memorial.
The film is a documentary-style re-creation of what Greengrass calls a "believable truth" about what might have happened on the plane and in air-traffic control centers -- from the moment a controller hears the first indications of the hijacks to when the Flight 93 passengers storm the cockpit and try to seize control.
It elapses in real time and is based on dialogue derived from improvisation, giving it a claustrophobic and believable feel.
Visa refusal
Many of the actors were at the premiere, but Lewis Alsamari, the British-based Iraqi actor who plays hijacker Saeed al-Ghamdi, was refused a visa to enter the US.
The US embassy in London gave no reason for its decision. He will see the film for the first time at a private screening in the UK in the next few days.
"This movie puts a face on the enemy and demonstrates accurately the extent to which the enemy will go to destroy us," David Beamer, the father of passenger Todd Beamer, said before the premiere.
"The enemy doesn't have the word surrender in his dictionary, and we can't have the word retreat in ours," he said.
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