Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, never-before-released footage offers a quiet and deeply personal look at New York City just days after one of the darkest moments in American history.
The footage was captured roughly around September 15, 2001, just four days after the attacks, by filmmaker William Sikora III, who was just 19 years old at the time.
“I went up with my dad, cousin and brother to deliver a hot dog cart from our family’s business. They donated it to the Salvation Army. We were still in shock because it was only a few days after the attacks. The city felt so quiet.”
That silence is one of the most striking elements of the film.
Rather than focusing on the images that were repeatedly shown on television in the days following September 11, the footage captures something more intimate: the atmosphere of the city itself. The streets, the faces, the memorials, the uncertainty, and the feeling of a place still trying to understand what had just happened.
For Sikora, the camera became a way to document what he was seeing.
“I was 19 years old and already interested in filmmaking, I was already filming everything in life, making short films and exploring my craft. I wanted to capture what was around me. At that age, I don’t think I fully understood how important that footage might become.”
There was no plan to create a documentary decades later. There was simply a young filmmaker with a camera witnessing history at an extraordinarily raw moment.
The trip to New York had a practical purpose. Sikora traveled with his father, brother, and cousin as part of their family business, which donated a hot dog cart to help support those working in the city after the attacks.
But once they arrived, the magnitude of what had happened became impossible to separate from the reason they were there.
“The city felt completely different. There were people out and about, but at the same time there was this strange quietness. Everyone was still processing it.”
That mood runs throughout the footage.
There is no narration telling the viewer what to feel. There are no recreations and no attempt to dramatize the moment. The images simply document New York as it existed in those first days after September 11.
That rawness is what gives the film its power.
Seen today, the footage also carries a meaning that could not have been understood in 2001. Twenty-five years have passed. New York rebuilt. The country moved forward. An entire generation has grown up knowing September 11 primarily through history books, documentaries, photographs, and archived television coverage.
For Sikora, revisiting his own footage after all these years has been an emotional experience.
“What started as me simply documenting what I saw became something very different with time. Now I look at it as a record of those few days and of what the city felt like in that moment.”
The film, Days After 9/11, is being released on the 25th anniversary as both a historical record and a personal remembrance.
It is dedicated to those who lost their lives, the families who were forever changed, the first responders and workers who entered the city in the days that followed, and everyone who carries memories of September 11 with them.
For Sikora, the film is ultimately less about looking back at destruction and more about preserving a moment that is becoming increasingly distant.
“Twenty-five years later, I’m grateful I had that camera with me. I didn’t know then what those images would mean. I just knew I wanted to remember what I was seeing.”
And now, a quarter-century later, those images remain.
A city in shock.
A country grieving.
And a 19-year-old filmmaker quietly recording history as it unfolded.
