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This list of artistic depictions of the September 11 attacks and its aftermath includes works of art, comic books, films (both in the cinema and on television), music and theater.

Art and design

• A Garden Stepping into the Sky (2002-3) by Ron Drummond is a design for a World Trade Center Memorial built out of the "clay" of functional interior space suitable for commercial, cultural, or residential uses. Praised by New York novelist and critic Samuel R. Delany and architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, Drummond's design was the focus of a documentary by the award-winning independent filmmaker Gregg Lachow and was featured on CNN.com and KOMO-TV News. As an imaginative space, the concept itself functions as a memorial; the farther in you go, the bigger it gets.

Comics

General Comics

• Alternative Comics produced 9-11 Emergency Relief, a similar collection of works with a cover by Frank Cho. ^[1]
• The Boys by Garth Ennis showed three of the four hijacked planes being shot down by the Air Force, and the fourth being intercepted by superheroes; that plane subsequently crashed on the Brooklyn Bridge, destroying it and killing over a thousand people.
• DC Comics produced two large books coordinated with Dark Horse Comics, Chaos! Comics, and Image Comics, 9-11: September 11, 2001, Volumes 1 & 2, which featured short stories and single-page works of art from a wide variety of artists.
• Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan and published by Wildstorm/DC, is set in a world in which a superhero called the Great Machine becomes mayor of New York after intervening in the September 11 attacks — managing to save only the South Tower, and later describing himself as a failure, because a real hero would have been in time to stop the first plane.
• Human Target #2-3, "The Unshredded Man" (Parts 1 & 2) by Peter Milligan feature a man who had faked his own death in the WTC attacks to escape embezzlement charges, but who is now given the opportunity to come clean.

Marvel Comics

Marvel Comics published books and comics based on the efforts of rescuers and fire fighters who risked their lives to save others during and after the attacks, donating proceeds their sale to relief funds. Among the books they published:

• A Moment of Silence, featuring several stories, without dialogue or captions, based on the attacks. One of them focused on a real-life relative of a Marvel Comics employee, an engineer killed after deciding to enter one of the Towers to search for survivors. Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada illustrated the cover.
• Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2) #36, called the Black Issue for its solid black cover, explores how Spider-Man and other Marvel characters like Captain America, Daredevil, Magneto, and Dr. Doom react in the aftermath of the attacks.
• Heroes. This comic featured pin-ups by various artists, many of which were oriented toward appreciation and admiration of emergency rescue workers, and patriotism. The cover was illustrated by Alex Ross, and the back cover, which showed a firefighter covered in ash, was illustrated by Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada (whose personal affection for firefighters had been long-established with his own creator-owned superhero, Ash), Todd McFarlane and Richard Isanove, and featured a poem by writer/director Kevin Smith.
• The Call of Duty (about firefighters) was also produced, which focused on firefighters.

Film (cinema and television)

Documentary films

• Being Osama, about Canadian Muslim men who happened to have the name "Osama", and how their lives were changed in the aftermath of the attacks.
• Beyond Belief
• Countdown to Ground Zero
• Fahrenheit 9/11, a June 2004 film by Michael Moore that examined the Bush administration's reaction to the attacks, became the highest-grossing documentary of all time.^[2] Rather than replaying the familiar images of the burning towers, Moore evoked the disaster with images of bystanders' horrified reactions.
• Fernando Zamora, a Mexican film student at Columbia University School of the Arts, managed to get into Ground Zero on September 11, 2001 and made two short films in homage to the victims. The films, Steps and Dust, were aired on NBC and ABC networks on September 12 and 13th respectively.
• Flight 175: As the World Watched
• The Flight That Fought Back
• Frontline episodes:
  • "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero"^[3]
• Grounded on 9/11
• The Hamburg Cell, a 2004 docudrama about the planning of the attacks.
• The Heart of Steel
• I Missed Flight 93
• Inside 9/11, a documentary from The National Geographic Society. It surveys the rise of terrorism directed at the West that culminated in 9/11. An Emmy-nominated film.
  • "Inside the Terror Network" ^[4]
  • "Looking for Answers"^[5]
• Loose Change
• The Man Who Predicted 9/11
• Missing Links: The Definitive Truth About 9/11
  • "Sacred Ground"^[6]
• Stairwell: Trapped In The World Trade Center
  • "Targeting America"^[7]
• Seconds from Disaster :
  • "American Airlines Flight 77"
• Trapped in the Towers: The Elevators of 9/11
• Twin Towers
• The World Trade Center: Rise and Fall of an American Icon
• WTC View, in which a gay New Yorker, Eric, advertises for a roommate for his WTC view apartment just before the attack. In the subsequent weeks many people respond, and Eric learns from them how the attack and aftermath affected their lives, forcing him to confront his own experience as well.
• Zeitgeist, the Movie
• The Last Hour of Flight 11
• 102 Minutes That Changed America and I-Witness to 9/11
• 9/11, a documentary made from the footage taken by two French brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who were making a documentary about a rookie fireman when the attacks took place. They were one of the few people to capture the first plane hitting the towers on film. One brother followed the firemen into the stricken structures and narrowly escaped the subsequent collapse. It was released in 2002 and introduced by Robert de Niro.
• 9/11: Press for Truth
• 9/11: The Twin Towers
• 911: In Plane Site

Feature films (South Asia and diaspora)

• Bandhak (2003 American film)
• Madhoshi (2004 Bollywood film)
• Kabul Express (2006 Bollywood film)
• Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota (2006 Bollywood film)
• Khuda Kay Liye, (2007 Pakistani film)
• New York (2009 Bollywood film)
• Kurbaan (2009 Bollywood film)
• My Name Is Khan (2010 Bollywood film)

Feature films, television films, miniseries (United States)

• Amreeka, 2009
• DC 9/11: Time of Crisis
• The End of the Whole Mess, an adaptation of the Stephen King short story of the same name which was featured in the miniseries, Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King, shows how the attacks act as a catalyst for one of the central characters wanting to rid the world of emotional anger.
• Flight 93 and The Flight that Fought Back are TV movies also about the fourth hijacked plane.
• The Great New Wonderful ^[8], directed by Danny Leiner, depicts the anxiety of post-9/11 New York City. Premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival in April 2005.
• The Guys is a film based upon the play by Anne Nelson. It is directed by Jim Simpson, and stars Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia.
• Homeland Security
• The Path to 9/11 (2006)
• Reign Over Me, a film starring Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle follows a man (Sandler) who lost his family in the 9/11 attacks, and the friendship that starts up again between himself and an old college buddy (Cheadle).
• The 2010 drama Remember Me ends with Tyler (Robert Pattinson) dying in 9/11.
• Spike Lee's 25th Hour is set in post-9/11 New York, and puts Ground Zero in the background of a pivotal scene.
• Stairwell: Trapped in the World Trade Center (2002)
• The 9/11 Commission Report
• Tiger Cruise, a Disney Channel Original Movie with its fictional events intertwined with the attacks.
• United 93, a 2006 film about the fourth hijacked plane and the terrorists' failure to use it as a missile when passengers attacked the terrorists.
• World Trade Center, a film by Oliver Stone, released in August 2006, tells the story of two Port Authority police officers, John McLoughlin (played by Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (played by Michael Peña), who were some of the last rescue workers pulled from Ground Zero alive.
• 11'9''01 September 11, in which 11 directors present 11 stories (each 11 minutes, nine seconds, and one frame long) of the event’s impact around the world, was released in September 2002. The filmmakers taking part were Iran/Afghanistan's Samira Makhmalbaf, France's Claude Lelouch, Egypt's Youssef Chahine, Bosnia'a Danis Tanovic, Burkina Faso's Idrissa Ouedraogo, Britain's Ken Loach, Mexico's Alejandro González Iñárritu, Israel's Amos Gitai, India's Mira Nair, the U.S.'s Sean Penn and Japan's Shohei Imamura.

Television series (United States)

• Aliens in America (2007-2008) - an American television series about a high school foreign exchange student from Pakistan who lives with an American family in Wisconsin.
• Rescue Me (2004-Present) - A television series about the professional and personal lives of a group of firefighters in the fictional Ladder 62 / Engine 99 firehouse in New York City, post 9/11. Flashbacks of 9/11 are prominent throughout the series.

Literature

Novels (general)

• Big Apple 2 Bites by Arunabha Sengupta is a novel about the experiences of an Indian engineer on business assignments to New York once on either side of 9/11. It deals with the slowdown during the days leading up to the September 11 attacks and the ripples of the attacks across the globe in many countries and varied facets of life.[9]
• Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
• Dead Air, a novel by British novelist Iain Banks, published in 2002. An early chapter is set in London on September 11, 2001. The main protagonist is a left-wing radio "shock jock" attending a wedding when news of the attacks filters through (Tuesday afternoon British time).
• Didactic Elegy by Ben Lerner deals with the attack using the language of art criticism.
• A Disorder Peculiar to the Country: A Novel by Ken Kalfus
• Between Two Rivers - Nicholas Rinaldi
• Eleven by David Llewellyn. The novel takes place in Cardiff and London on September 11th and deals with the impact the terrorist attacks have on the lives of people in the UK.
• The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud traces the lives of three NYC friends before and after the events of 9/11.
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, follows the narrator, 9-year-old Oskar Schell, whose father was on the upper floors of the World Trade Center when the jets crashed into the Twin Towers. To fight his grief and quell his imagination, Oskar embarks on a quest to find what he hopes is his father's most illuminating secret. In service of this quest, Oskar conquers many of his irrational fears and comforts other damaged souls.
• False Impression by Jeffrey Archer is a thriller that takes place during and immediately after 9/11.
• The Good Priest's Son by Reynolds Price
• Heaven's Wind by Turki al-Hamad a Saudi novelist
• In Spirit [10], a Hugo-nominated science fiction novella by Pat Forde, published in Analog Science Fiction in September 2002. A form of "spiritual" time travel is perfected in the middle of the 21st century and the aged children of 9/11 victims are given the opportunity to go back in time and be with their loved ones "in spirit" in their final moments. The tale is told from the point of view of a terrorist who abetted the hijackers on the ground and is 30-odd years into a life sentence when he's offered the chance to volunteer as an experimental subject.
• The Last Days of Mohammed Atta (part of the collection The Second Plane) by Martin Amis.
• Last Fall by Ronald Sukenick
• Lessons in Essence by Dana Standridge includes a chapter in which a group of Taiwanese people watch the 9/11 events as they unfold on Japanese television news. Among them is the main character, Teacher Li, who has family living in New York and who cannot understand the Japanese broadcast. The scene gives a convex view of the terrorist attacks on America and the way they were felt outside the U.S.
• Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan is the fictional story of three teenagers' reactions to 9/11 and the healing process that follows.
• Night Fall by Nelson DeMille connects TWA 800 to twin tower crash.
• Only Partly Here by Lucius Shepard is a novella in the magical realism genre. It follows a rescue worker sifting through the wreckage of the attacks.
• Saturday by Ian McEwan is a novel that takes place in London after the September 11th attacks but before the 7 July 2005 London bombings. The novel shows how much the world has changed since the attacks in America.
• Small Town by Lawrence Block
• The Third Brother - Nick McDonell
• Tirza by Dutch author and New York resident Arnon Grunberg. The novel deals with a man who loses his fortune when his hedge fund collapses after the 9/11 attacks. He goes mad when his daughter starts going out with evil itself: a man resembling Mohammed Atta.
• Unlubricated by Arthur Nersesian has several scenes devoted to a character witnessing the attacks and the ensuing confusion. One of the themes of the novel is about her overcoming the things that she saw and heard that morning.
• The Usual Rules - Joyce Maynard
• Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins features several scenes of Military and CIA officials reacting to news of the attacks.
• Windows on the World, a 2003 novel by Frédéric Beigbeder, is set in the restaurant at the top of the North Tower on September 11. It tells the story of Carthew Yorston and his two sons as they try to escape or somehow survive the attack. Each chapter of the book represents one minute in time between 8:30 and 10:30 on 9/11. It also features a parallel narrative wherein the author, a French writer sympathetic to America, discusses the process of writing the book and his motivations for doing so.
• The Writing on the Wall - Lynne Sharon Schwartz
• The Zero by Jess Walter

Novels (notable American authors)

• The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah by Stephen King. It makes a reference to the attack, when the characters place an artifact known as Black Thirteen in a coin-op storage in the World Trade Center. After leaving, Jake and Callahan half-jokingly discuss what would happen if the towers were to collapse on the object.
• Everyman by Philip Roth. Its protagonist moves to the New Jersey shore as a result of the fear he feels in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
• Falling Man by Don DeLillo features a protagonist who survives the attacks on the World Trade Center.
• The Good Life by Jay McInerney takes place immediately before, during, and after the events of 9/11.
• I Am No One You Know: Stories: "The Mutants" by Joyce Carol Oates
• In the Shadow of No Towers by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and illustrator of Maus, Art Spiegelman, is a 2004 work that mourns both 9/11 and the political uses to which it has been put.
• Pattern Recognition (2003) by William Gibson was the first novel to address the attacks; the main character is a marketing consultant whose father disappeared in Manhattan on the morning of September 11.
• Terrorist (novel) by John Updike explores post 9/11 America through the eyes of a radical Muslim youth and his Jewish guidance counselor.

Poetry

• Anything Can Happen by Seamus Heaney (a loose translation of Horace's Ode 1.34) is a response to the attacks. [11]
• Fallacies of Wonder by Richard Howard is poem about the difficult task of trying to remember the Twin Towers as they actually were now that they are gone. [12]

Music

Theater

• Adopt a Sailor by Charles Evered, opened in New York City on the one year anniversary of the attacks, premiering at Town Hall. It was one of several short plays that premiered in an evening called "Brave New World" and depicted a New York City couple hosting a sailor for dinner during Fleet Week and the ramifications of the attack on their relationship one year later. Play starred Bebe Neuwirth, Amy Irving, Sam Waterston, Liev Schreiber, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson in a rotating cast. It was subsequently produced as a feature film starring Neuwirth, Peter Coyote and Ethan Peck, directed by playwright Evered, and released in the fall of 2008.
• The Guys, a play by Anne Nelson, explores the memories and emotions of a surviving fire captain and a writer who helps him write eulogies for his lost comrades. The play was first performed on December 4, 2001.
• The Mercy Seat by Neil LaBute opened in New York a little more than a year after The Guys, on December 18, 2002. The play, whose protagonist considers faking his death after having coincidentally survived the attacks, took a far darker look at the attacks than New Yorkers were accustomed to, but was nevertheless a commercial and critical success.^[9]
• Recent Tragic Events by Craig Wright takes place on September 12, 2001, and deals with a blind date between a man and a woman who is trying to reach her sister, who lives in New York. It opened in Washington, D.C. in 2002.

References

External links

• Rebuilding NYC: 9/11 in Art and Culture: September 11 Film and Video Documentaries; a lengthy list of September 11-related documentaries. The site also has lists of books, songs, theater and works in other media inspired by September 11.
• (French) Lower Manhattan Project is a French Canadian site from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) dedicated to 9/11 culture, listing bibliographical references, filmographies, artworks and documentation about 9/11 in fiction. Also featured are summaries of novels, movies and artworks with analysis of the mythification and fictionalization of 9/11.