“It didn’t take me long to think about what I wanted to show,” said the Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Lee, after he found out that he would be appearing at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 11. At the Glenn Gould Theater on Monday, Lee showed the crowd an episode of his 2021 HBO docuseries NYC Epicenters 9/11 to 2021 ½, which compares 9/11 and the COVID crisis in New York City.

Lee, originally from Atlanta but moved to Brooklyn as a child, conducted several interviews with average New Yorkers about the fateful day in 2001 to make the documentary. The docuseries also touches on other meaningful events in the city in the two decades since 9/11, such as the Black Lives Matter protests in 2021.

Lee was not in the city on Sept. 11. “I had to get home, had to get back to my family,” said Lee, who was in Los Angeles for a meeting with Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

“The goal, we know we accomplished, was to have average New Yorkers who were witnesses to what happened,” Lee told TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey.

Lee was honored with the Ebert Director Award at this year’s TIFF and will be the Talking Heads moderator reunion discussion.