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9/11: The Falling Man
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9/11: The Falling Man

71 MIN · EN · STATUS: [ STREAMING ]
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On the morning of September 11, 2001, Associated Press photographer Richard Drew captured a single frame of a man falling headfirst from the burning North Tower, one of dozens who jumped rather than wait for the fire to reach them. The film traces what happened to that photograph after it ran in newspapers across the country the next day: the public revulsion, the editors who pulled it from later editions, and the shift in language from "jumpers" to euphemisms that let the subject disappear from coverage entirely. It follows journalists and researchers trying to identify the man in the picture, weighing circumstantial evidence toward Jonathan Briley, a sound engineer who worked at Windows on the World, against the families who never got a confirmed answer. Interviews with editors and witnesses sit alongside footage from the day itself, and the film treats the photograph as a test case for what news organizations are willing to show. It closes on the same discomfort it opens with: an image widely seen once, then quietly withdrawn.