Netflix has released the official trailer for Turning Point: Generation 9/11, a new feature documentary examining the lasting impact of September 11 through the lives of the generation that grew up in its aftermath.
Twenty-five years have passed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 changed the United States and reshaped global politics.
For millions of people, however, 9/11 is not simply an event preserved in archive footage or history books.
Its consequences became the world in which they grew up.
Turning Point: Generation 9/11 approaches that history through the people whose lives were directly shaped by what followed.
The documentary includes children who lost parents in the attacks, journalists whose careers began during the War on Terror, American Marines who served during the conflicts that followed and young Afghans whose lives unfolded alongside two decades of war.
Together, their experiences transform the familiar historical timeline into something much more personal.
September 11 led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, sweeping changes to national security, expanded surveillance, new political divisions and a fundamental shift in how many Americans understood their country's place in the world.
But the effects were not confined to the United States.
For an entire generation in Afghanistan, war became an almost permanent fact of life.
The documentary follows that story through to the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, bringing the consequences of decisions made immediately after 9/11 into direct contact with people who were children — or had not even been born — when the attacks occurred.
The official trailer combines archival footage from September 11 with interviews and personal testimony from people who experienced different parts of that history.
Rather than attempting to retell the attacks alone, the film asks what happened to the generation that inherited them.
Some grew up without parents.
Others entered journalism, the military or public service during a period dominated by terrorism and war.
Young Afghans experienced the consequences from the opposite side of the conflict, living through the arrival of American forces, two decades of occupation and their eventual departure.
The documentary is directed by Brian Knappenberger, continuing Netflix’s Turning Point franchise.
The series began with Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror in 2021, which examined the attacks themselves, the rise of Al-Qaeda and the political and military response that followed.
Later instalments expanded the franchise to other defining periods of modern history, including the Cold War and the Vietnam War.
Generation 9/11 returns the project to where it began, but with a different perspective.
Instead of asking primarily how September 11 happened or how governments responded, the new film examines what that response ultimately meant for ordinary people over the following quarter-century.
That distinction becomes particularly powerful as the documentary moves between generations and countries.
The historical significance of 9/11 can be measured through governments, wars and political decisions.
Its human legacy is measured differently.
It exists in children who grew up without parents, veterans who returned from conflicts that lasted far longer than expected, journalists who spent their careers covering terrorism and war, and Afghan families whose lives were repeatedly transformed by decisions made thousands of miles away.
Twenty-five years later, many of the people featured in the documentary are old enough to look back on an entire adulthood shaped by that single morning.
Turning Point: Generation 9/11 asks what remains when the immediate shock becomes history — but the consequences are still being lived.
Turning Point: Generation 9/11 premieres globally on Netflix on September 2, 2026.
Watch the official trailer below.
