General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror

Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror is a five-part Netflix documentary series directed by Brian Knappenberger that chronicles the September 11, 2001 attacks and the two decades of war and policy that followed, released on September 1, 2021, days before the attacks' twentieth anniversary.¹^•² The series frames its subject with the claim that modern history divides into before 9/11 and after 9/11, and runs from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to the Taliban's return to control of Afghanistan weeks before the anniversary.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	Five-part docuseries, Netflix, documentary/history, TV-14, released September 1, 2021²
Director	Brian Knappenberger; executive producers Brian Knappenberger, Eve Marson, and Lowell Bergman²
Interviews	88 interviews with officials from multiple US presidential administrations, former CIA members, US military veterans, Afghan National Army soldiers, Taliban commanders, Afghan government members, warlords, and civilians, many of whom had never spoken on camera before³^•¹
Time span	From the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the US withdrawal and Taliban takeover in 2021¹
Critical reception	83% Tomatometer (6 reviews) and 85% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; Metascore 74 on Metacritic²^•⁴
Follow-up	Turning Point: Generation 9/11, a 97-minute standalone documentary released on Netflix on September 2, 2026⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Content and structure

The series opens in New York City on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. At 8:46am a first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center; seventeen minutes later, at 9:03am, a second plane struck the South Tower.⁷ From there the narrative pauses and travels back to 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which the series treats as a remarkable turning point in history, examining the takeover and the United States' support of the Afghan resistance as a defining moment that shaped foreign relations afterward.⁷

The day itself. By the end of the first episode the story returns to the United States. Episode two covers American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37am killing 184 victims, and pays tribute to the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93, who fought the hijackers before their plane crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. The episode then returns to New York, where the South Tower collapsed at 9:59am and the North Tower at 10:28am.⁷ In total, the four hijacked airplanes left 2,996 people dead.⁷

One sequence recounts how President George W. Bush first learned of the attacks while reading books to second-grade students at a school: Andrew Card, then White House Chief of Staff, leaned over and whispered, "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack." Card recounts the moment on camera, alongside the clip and the famous photograph of the president's expression of dismay.⁷

The questions the series poses. Netflix's synopsis states that the series asks who attacked the United States and why, what breakdowns in intelligence allowed the attacks to happen, and how decisions at the highest levels of three administrations in the war on terror brought the country to the moment of the 2021 withdrawal.¹ Director Knappenberger, commenting around the release, noted that after the longest war in American history, with trillions of dollars spent, thousands of American lives lost, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans killed, the Taliban had again seized control of Afghanistan weeks after a US withdrawal, and asked how the day had changed the country.³

Reception

Critical response was generally favorable. On Rotten Tomatoes, season 1 holds an 83% Tomatometer from 6 reviews and an 85% Popcornmeter audience score.² Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 74, based on 5 positive and 1 mixed review from 6 critics.⁴

Reviewers emphasized different strengths. Aaron Barnhart of Primetimer called it "exactly the kind of serious, searing recapitulation that this moment demands," praising five "expertly compressed" episodes.⁴ Clémence Michallon of The Independent scored it 4/5 and described it as a comprehensive, timely examination of the events, their historical context, and their contemporary implications.⁷ Nick Schager of The Daily Beast called it an upsetting, enraging, and largely even-handed history lesson about the preceding two decades, while noting that rather than uncovering bombshells it serves as an extremely watchable survey meant to be the streaming service's definitive 9/11-related viewing option.⁸ John Anderson, writing in The Wall Street Journal, noted that the series' objective of tracking the motives of the perpetrators back to the 1980s, beyond the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, distinguished it from contemporaneous anniversary documentaries.⁸ A more critical line held that a viewer interested specifically in either a 9/11 documentary or a War on Terror documentary could find better-focused alternatives, since the series attempts both in depth.⁴

The World Socialist Web Site's review took issue with the framing of the title itself, arguing that the series accepts too many premises of the war on terror and does not substantively challenge US foreign policy, while still calling the material and imagery valuable.³

The director

Brian Knappenberger's earlier documentaries include We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists (2012), The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014), Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press (2017), and Scout's Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America (2023).⁶^•³

Follow-up: Generation 9/11

A standalone companion film, Turning Point: Generation 9/11, was released on Netflix on September 2, 2026, with a runtime of 1 hour 37 minutes and narration by Josh Brolin.⁵ Where the 2021 series covered causes and consequences across five hours, the film takes a generational angle: with a few exceptions, its interview subjects were infants or toddlers on September 11, 2001, and the film is about the generation that inherited the world the attacks created rather than about people remembering them.⁶

The film follows children who lost parents in the attacks, journalists who began their careers covering the original war on terror, and young Afghans and Marines dealing with the fallout of the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including the chaotic evacuation at Abbey Gate.⁵^•⁶ It also examines discrimination directed at Muslims, refugees, and immigrants in the aftermath of the attacks, and connects the surveillance architecture erected after 9/11 to later domestic enforcement practices.⁹^•⁵

Critics were more divided than for the series. The film's Tomatometer stood at 31% from 7 reviews, against a 50% audience rating.⁵ Richard Roeper of RogerEbert.com gave it 3.5/4, calling it journalistically solid and provocative while conceding that 96 minutes is not enough time to cover so many angles of the 9/11 fallout.⁶ Lucy Mangan of The Guardian gave it 4/5, writing that the film establishes the depth of the tragedy and then its breadth, arguing that decisions made in the aftermath shaped the United States into its current state.¹⁰ Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle gave it 2.5/4, finding the interviews with people who lost parents heartfelt but unsurprising, and criticizing the film for tracing every subsequent American problem to 9/11 without saying what course would have been wiser.¹¹ A review at TheFilmCritics argued the film spreads itself too thin, gives too much weight to the Afghanistan withdrawal relative to everyday legacies such as airport security and surveillance, and never becomes the definitive examination its anniversary occasion might have warranted.¹² The American Conservative similarly judged that cramming 25 years of history into a 97-minute runtime left the film without a single defining thread.¹³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026