In a Hollywood Reporter piece timed to the anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks, a critic reflects on how art has helped New Yorkers process the tragedy, centring on the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Paul Greengrass's United 93. Despite scepticism that the film was "too soon", festival co-founders Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal invited the victims' family members alongside the cast, creating a deeply emotional event that the writer argues offered genuine healing. The piece uses this memory as a springboard to invoke De Niro's present-day call for New York's political leadership, including mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, to act as a unifying "bridge" for the city.

The article recounts the writer's personal experience at the Ziegfeld Theatre screening, describing family members sharing memories on the red carpet and then breaking into audible, collective sobbing as the film ended, an outpouring the writer says bridged the emotional gap between victims' relatives and onlookers. It also recalls a poignant post-screening encounter in which a family member reassured an actor who had played one of the hijackers. The piece connects this history of Tribeca's founders using art to foster civic healing to a present-day appeal from De Niro for unity in New York City politics ahead of Mamdani's mayoral prospects.