MY FIRE ESCAPE
Director/Producer
Keith Maitland
Producer
Alisa Payne
Co‑Producer
Thuc Nguyen
Executive Producers
Sam Pollard
Geeta Gandbhir
Megan Gilbride
Project Type
Documentary Short Film
Project Status
Production
September 11th—Thuc woke to the sound of the first plane striking the World Trade Center just blocks from her Chinatown apartment. Grabbing her mini-DV camera, she stepped onto her fire escape at the corner of Essex & Canal and began filming. She captured the burning building, the stunned reactions of New Yorkers below—and the second plane hitting the Twin Towers.
It’s hard to imagine, but there is very little footage of the attacks of 9/11. 2001 is a world before smartphones and live streams and the ubiquity of the digital image that seemingly captures every angle of American life today. Thuc’s unseen footage adds a dimension and perspective to the historical record that we have never considered.
MY FIRE ESCAPE is a deeply personal documentary born of this eyewitness view and the emotional journey of confronting it 25 years later.
KEITH MAITLAND lived 10 blocks East of Thuc Nguyen in 2001. The aftermath of 9/11, and in particular, the faces of people on the streets of Lower Manhattan early on the morning of 9/12 deeply impacted Maitland—and informed his approach while making TOWER, an animated retelling of the first mass school shooting in America. As director/producer of TOWER, Maitland has explored the impact of trauma on a community when the social fabric has been torn open by an unfathomable act of public violence. In 2021 Maitland’s follow-up DEAR MR. BRODY sold at Telluride and launched as a part of HBOMax’s first slate of docs. This film celebrated a lost archive of thousands of personal letters highlighting every facet of want, desire, and need in American society in 1970—and today. Maitland’s films have won Emmys, Critics’ Choice, and Cinema Eye Awards—and over 30 festival jury prizes. His work’s been short-listed for the Oscar, nominated for Peabody, Gotham, and PGA awards, and featured (twice) on the front page of the NYTimes Arts section. Maitland’s filmmaking approach combines creativity and intimate storytelling with a deep well of empathy, so that each film creates a new language and opportunity with which to explore our greater humanity.
ALISA PAYNE produced the Academy Award nominated THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR and the Emmy-nominated limited series KATRINA: COME HELL OR HIGH WATER, which both premiered at #1 on Netflix. She also produced the Emmy Award–nominated and Academy Award–shortlisted documentary STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING, based on Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s eponymous book, as well as the critically acclaimed HBO film BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME. Payne served as showrunner and co-executive producer of HARLEM ICE, the Emmy nominated Disney+ docuseries. She is producer of the forthcoming short film WOMEN COUNT (Sundance/Times Studios), and executive producer of FRESHMAN. AGAIN. and THE BLACK TABLE. Her work has earned five Critics Choice Documentary Awards, a Grierson Award, an Independent Spirt Award, a Gotham Award, an NAACP Image Award, two Gracie Awards, and many film critics’ awards. In 2022 Payne co-founded Message Pictures alongside filmmakers Sam Pollard and Geeta Gandbhir, a production company with a mission to create opportunities for underrepresented creatives to tell stories that matter to them.
SAM POLLARD is a renowned film and television editor, documentary producer, and director. Between 1990 and 2010, he collaborated with Spike Lee on various projects. Their work together earned critical acclaim and awards. He recently released KATRINA: COME HELL OR HIGH WATER, which premiered at #1 on Netflix, earned three Emmy nominations, and won the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Nonfiction Series. Since 2012, Pollard has focused on producing and directing. The Film at Lincoln Center honored him as one of "cinema’s most dedicated chroniclers of the Black experience in America." In 2026, Pollard's body of work was awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Emmy award.
GEETA GANDBHIR is an award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of Message Pictures. In 2026, she made history by becoming the first woman director nominated for two Oscars in different categories in the same year. Recent credits include THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR, which received an Oscar nomination in 2026, the series KATRINA: COME HELL OR HIGH WATER for Netflix which won the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Nonfiction Series and was nominated for three Emmy Awards, and the short THE DEVIL IS BUSY for HBO that was nominated for a 2026 Oscar.
MEGAN GILBRIDE is a two-time Emmy-winning and Independent Spirit Award-nominated producer of fiction and documentary films. Her films include the visionary, animated documentary feature, TOWER, dramatic fiction feature LOVERS OF HATE, and sci-fi documentary feature, FATHOM. Her films have played at festivals on five continents including Sundance, Venice, Busan, Dubai, HotDocs, IDFA, and Karlovy Vary. Megan was one of four recipients of the inaugural Dear Producer Award, recognizing independent producers’ creative vision and leadership in the field. She serves on the advisory board of the Documentary Producers Alliance and is a member of the Producers Guild of America.