Synopsis

On September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 is hijacked while traveling from Newark to San Francisco. As confusion spreads through air traffic control centers and government offices, passengers and crew learn about the attacks through phone calls and begin to understand the danger facing them. Their decision to resist the hijackers leads to a desperate struggle that ends in a Pennsylvania field.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film unfolds in nearly real time, paralleling the approximately 111-minute duration of the actual flight.

• Production was based on the 9/11 Commission Report, passenger phone calls, air traffic control records, and extensive interviews with relatives of the victims.

• Families of the 40 passengers and crew members cooperated with the production. They supplied personal details such as clothing, habits, possessions, and family relationships.

• Several real-life air traffic controllers, military personnel, airline pilots, and flight attendants appeared as themselves or portrayed closely related professional roles.

• The passengers and crew performers were housed separately from the performers playing the hijackers. They also used separate gyms and dining arrangements to heighten the sense of division during filming.

• Much of the dialogue was improvised from the available evidence and the performers' research, rather than taken directly from a conventional screenplay.

• The working title was "Flight 93." The film was shot in New Jersey, Boston, Washington, Morocco, and England, including locations at Newark Liberty International Airport and London Stansted Airport.

• The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 25, 2006, and opened in U.S. theaters on April 28, 2006. It was also screened out of competition at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

• Universal Pictures donated 10 percent of the film's first three days of North American box office revenue, reported as $1.15 million, toward a memorial for the victims near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

• The film was named one of the American Film Institute's Movies of the Year for 2006 and received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Film Editing.