With the documentary film Turning Point: Generation 9/11 (now on Netflix), director Brian Knappenberger picks up where he left off with 2021 miniseries Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror. That series debuted almost simultaneously with the U.S. military’s official withdrawal from Afghanistan, a chaotic and deadly occurrence that becomes the focus of Knappenberger’s new film. Now, on the 25th anniversary of the tragedy, he takes a new angle, emphasizing the voices of people who were too young to truly remember the events of 9/11, but whose lives were indelibly altered by the tragedy. 

The Gist: Michael Smoak was five years old on Sept. 11, 2001. He remembers being home sick from school and watching his family members react to the awful news. Twenty years later, he was a U.S. Marine in Kabul, watching friends and Afghan citizens die due to the actions of an ISIS suicide bomber. Generation 9/11 opens and closes with his story, frequently returning to his commentary as Knappenberger pieces together testimonials from people of his generation. Their words are bolstered by those of experts who are older and provide necessary context, primarily during roughly the first half-hour, which uses the stories of first responders, Muslim Americans, the curator of the 9/11 museum and more to recreate on-the-ground narratives in locations that were attacked: New York City, the Pentagon, and the site of the United 93 plane crash in Pennsylvania. 

As those talking heads use phrases like “epochal change” and “turning living memory into history,” Knappenberger interviews: Smoak and some of his fellow Marines. A woman who wasn’t even a year old when her father, the co-pilot of flight United 93, died. A man who remembers kissing his Pentagon-employed father goodbye before school, the last time he’d see him alive. An Afghan husband and father who escaped the country with his children in 2021, but whose wife couldn’t join them and now lives under tyrannical Taliban rule. These massive events precipitated so, so much tragedy.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Jamie Roberts’ 2022 HBO documentary Escape from Kabul tells the story of the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in great detail. 

Our Take: Graphic footage from that awful day, audio of phone calls from people who died on the planes or in the Twin Towers, commentators breaking down in tears as they share their stories – Generation 9/11 is a difficult watch, but one that feels necessary to understand the macro story (how events precipitated America’s current turmoil) and the micro stories (how they impacted a wide range of citizenry). Even if we’re familiar with the horror of being near the World Trade Center on that day, Knappenberger underscores its indelibility by bringing it into sharp focus via gut-wrenching testimonials. 

But the director doesn’t just reiterate what we already know – he explores the repercussions of 9/11 on a generation that only understands it secondhand, and how those people are subject to an international political environment defined by turmoil. There’s no before and after for them, only now. Knappenberger’s thesis details how their trauma is different in the wake of the U.S. government’s Authorization for Use of Military Force, which opened the door to a “forever war” against terrorism that shaped everything from the Iraq war to the MAGA movement to the current immigration conundrum to the current war with Iran. The tragedies keep piling up; will they ever cease?

Our Call: Again: a difficult watch. But Generation 9/11 ultimately dares to hope that younger generations can use their unique perspective to enact positive change. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.