Behind the Scenes of “Flight 93”

The first major motion picture to focus on the September 11, 2001 attacks—specifically on the plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field—will be released this spring, and Sunday’s New York Times has a detailed look at the production. All of the families of the flight’s passengers reportedly cooperated with director Paul Greengrass, not just those who had been able to reach their loved ones via cell phone.

The result, writes Heather Timmons, is an incredibly detailed telling of the day’s tragic events.

In “Flight 93,” Mr. Greengrass incorporates information about the disaster, including the plane’s exact movements in the air, the times and content of phone calls to family members, recordings from inside the cockpit and reaction on the ground from air traffic controllers and the military, as well as details about the passengers’ personalities and mannerisms provided by the families. The goal is to weave what he calls “a believable truth” about what happened in midair. Many of the scenes in the plane are being filmed in long, grueling takes, with actors improvising dialogue and actions.

“One of the reasons why Flight 93 exerts such a powerful hold on our imaginations is precisely because we don’t know exactly what happened,” Mr. Greengrass said in an interview on the set, a concrete hangar dominated by the sections of the rebuilt plane, which are on mechanized scaffolding to make them pitch and roll during filming. “Which one of us doesn’t think about that day and wonder how it must have been and how we might have reacted?” he asked.

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