Twin Towers

When Dick Wolf, producer of the NBC series Law & Order, began filming a reality-TV pilot about a New York City police squad, no one could have known that terrorists would claim the lives of fourteen of the men in that unit on September 11, 2001. Joseph Vigiano, a highly decorated member of the NYPD Emergency Services Squad 3, died in the World Trade Center, along with his older brother, John, Jr., a firefighter with Bedford-Stuyvesant's Ladder 132. They both rushed to the scene as soon as the first building was struck and were still helping people evacuate when the towers collapsed. The footage that had been shot for Wolf's pilot is the basis for this Academy Award-winning documentary. Twin Towers follows Joe's Harlem-based rescue team as they go on raids and investigate homicides, and includes interviews with their families, news footage and home videos to tell a story of dedication, heroism and the American spirit that defines us, as a people and a nation.