On 9/11, Robert De Niro Says Mayor Mamdani Can Be a Bridge For NYC

Art helped us process 9/11 in so many ways right after the attacks. But for me the breakthrough wouldn't come for nearly five years, at a midtown Manhattan movie theater. The Tribeca Film Festival had decided in 2006 to open with a premiere of Paul Greengrass' United 93 , despite puzzling murmurs of “too soon.” (Is there a reverse statute of limitations for when artists can make sense of trauma?) Tribeca organizers - Robert De Niro , producing partner Jane Rosenthal and the rest of the staff of the healing-minded Manhattan film gathering - invited not only Greengrass and the many terrific workaday actors featured in the film but the family members of the victims and heroes of that titular flight’s hijacking. Covering the event for my employer at the time, I approached the old Ziegfeld Theater with a mix of curiosity and anxiety.