Documentary filmmakers and brothers Jules Naudet and Gédéon Naudet were working on a film project about the New York Fire Departme...
Documentary filmmakers and brothers Jules Naudet and Gédéon Naudet were working on a film project about the New York Fire Department when the Twin Towers were struck on September 11, 2001. The pair captured rare footage of the terrorist attacks in New York, including scenes from inside one of the towers and the only clear footage of the plane hitting the North Tower. Much of the footage was later turned into the documentary “9/11.”
The pair joined CNN’s Amara Walker on Sunday to reflect on their experience 20 years later.
“Just watching those images gives me goosebumps,” Gédéon Naudet said. “At the end of that day, and 20 years later, it’s still the same thing. To be completely in awe with what we witnessed, the three of us, the extraordinary courage and the selflessness of those people who came to rescue.”
“What we forget to say often that the police and firefighters and some civilians rescued almost 15,000 people from those towers,” he continued. “It is extraordinary.”
Jules Naudet traveled with the FDNY into the North Tower and captured some of the only footage from inside that day, including evacuations and the South Tower being hit. He then took shelter with firefighters and used his camera’s light to help guide them as they evacuated the building.
“It was these moments where you realize, time becomes fluid. It is elastic. You have minutes which you have the impression lasted for hours and hours,” Jules Naudet said.”…But that light, it was kind of a little beacon of hope. Because through that light, we were all being able to not only find our way out but unfortunately being able to find the first person,” referring to FDNY Chaplain Rev. Mychal Judge, who was the first certified death in the attacks.
He went on to say that while “we saw the worst of humanity” that day, he also saw the best of humanity in the wake of the attacks.
“It was a day where…we saw the worst of humanity, which is terrorism. But I think all of us really hang on to the best that we saw that selflessness, that courage, these acts of small heroism of the first responders and the civilians. At a moment where everything goes horribly wrong, you see the best of human nature rises to the surface.”
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