In twelve years, this is the first movie Waters has picked that I’d seen, or even heard of, before he picked it. But it fits the unpredictable tradition he has established with his yearly presentations within Maryland Film Festival; though United 93 was universally acclaimed when it came out, it had rough sledding commercially, a project many moviegoers pre-judged and bypassed without giving a closer look.

 

The movie is incredibly powerful, and it’s true that its ultra-realistic presentation of very recent tragic events was considered too intense by many when it was released in spring of 2006. It starts early on the morning of 9/11/2001, and focuses on the one flight the Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked that did not reach its destination. Thanks to the quick thinking and utter courage of its passengers, United 93 crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, killing the people on board but no one else. No matter how many images of that day you’ve seen, no matter how much you feel you know, every minute of this film is riveting.

 

Paul Greengrass directed this bold and controversial project, sandwiched between his two critical and commercial home-run entries in the Bourne franchise (Supremacy and Ultimatum), but the feel of this film arguably has more in common with his 2002 documentary-style re-creation of the famous Londonderry protests, Bloody Sunday (which screened with host Martin O’Malley as a MFF Friends of the Festival event), a widely praised and award-winning film. (Jed Dietz)

John Waters has been making films since his 1964 short Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, every one of them shot in Baltimore. He has acted in a number of movies, working with collaborators ranging from Jonathan Demme and Woody Allen to Johnny Knoxville. He is sought after by a wide variety of filmmakers for his views on diverse aspects of American culture; interviews with him can be seen in a number of documentaries in MFF 2010, including William S. Burroughs: A Man Within and Beautiful Darling. His new book Role Models, which was excerpted at length in the Huffington Post to great acclaim, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in June. Waters is an MFF Board member.