For those of us of a certain age, the defining cultural, societal moment is without a doubt the terrorist attacks that unfolded on September 11, 2001. That one event changed our lives forever. It made us all realize that evil truly exists. There are dark forces unleashed in the world that want to do us harm, simply because we live a different way and don’t worship the same deity. And this wickedness isn’t in some land that’s far away, kept at bay by heroes in uniform.
They’ve found a way inside our country, in a land we thought was safe and secure, impregnable. We lived in a fortress, one that only truly existed in our minds, and we were oblivious, no, incredulous, to the idea that someone could actually attack us. That only happened in other places. Not here.
Well, a new report has emerged from The Hollywood Reporter revealing there was a documentary called “We Go Higher” that was supposed to provide a voice to the kids of victims who died during the horrific terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Unfortunately, the film producer who made the movie is facing serious charges of financial fraud and emotional manipulation, which means that this project is probably never going to be released. And that means the voices of these individuals will never be heard.
One of the individuals interviewed in the documentary, Delaney Colaio, who is only 18, asks the pair of co-directors in a scene if they can take a break during their conversation due to the heavy subject matter they are discussing.
Someone offers water, but no break is given to Colaio. The directors, the award-winning Sara Hirsh Bordo and her frequent collaborator Michael Campo, resume firing questions about self-harm, Colaio’s relationship with his mother, and about his father, killed when Colaio was a toddler. During the two-hour-plus session, filmed in August 2017, and the three-hour session the night before, Bordo and Campo also grill Colaio on why he doesn’t want to see the terrorists face the death penalty. Amid all this, Colaio, brown eyes bleary and pained, puts his face in his hands and says he’s had enough, that he’s already shared things he’s never shared with anyone.
“Why do you think you’re suffering so much?” Campo goes on to ask the young woman, who now identifies as a transgender male. “Do you think you deserve this, everything that’s happened to you?”
After some back-and-forth talk, Colaio, distraught says that she doesn’t want to have this conversation, to which Campo responds, “But I do. And we’re on my time now.”
“I’m very drained,” Colaio says a few minutes later in yet another attempt to derail the chat from this uncomfortable moment. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”
“But this is not a draining conversation …” Campo says to try and prevent the teen from trying to wiggle out of their talk. This doesn’t really seem like professional behavior, does it? If the kid doesn’t want to open up about this subject, why should he be forced to? Hasn’t he already suffered enough?
Later, outside in a park after filming a scene with Brian Cosgrove, whose father also died in the Twin Towers, Colaio has a panic attack. The camera keeps rolling, catching his body slumped on a sidewalk with Bordo, lips pursed, holding his prone head on her lap. Colaio was filmed on an emergency room gurney, blinking eyes darting back and forth as a nurse examined him.
In a phone interview more than six years later, Colaio says he hates seeing himself that way, so vulnerable and hurt, and that he did not know he was being filmed by Bordo in the hospital until he saw a cut of the documentary. “I felt like I was going to die,” he says. “I had no idea what was going on.”
We Go Higher received massive attention from the moment preproduction was announced in 2017, with The New York Times, USA Today and CBS News running splashy pieces. It would, the marketing promised, be produced by Bordo and co-directed by Colaio.
PEOPLE gushed about Colaio’s resilience in starting the project, noting the film was slated to be released to the public in 2018, saying that the creative team behind the movie was planning to interview every 9/11 child who wanted to be part of it.
A total of $900,000 was raised from families who suffered losses in 9/11 and from other supporters as well, according to an audit that was prepared in 2020 as part of a request made by Colaio.
Seven years after the documentary was announced, it still has not been released.
This isn’t just another story about a production gone bad, money misspent. Besides being a tragically untold tale about the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the ill-fated We Go Higher raises troubling questions about the documentary industry itself. In addition to spawning a lawsuit that alleged Bordo and her companies misappropriated production funds, and angry former producers mystified by what they say was Bordo’s luxury travel and oddly timed purchases, there are disturbing accounts of how the traumatized were treated in front of and behind the camera.
As documentaries have grown from a cottage industry of mostly low-budget curios to being a core entertainment product with hits like Quiet on Set, Where Is Wendy Williams?, and Britney vs Spears, there have been intensifying questions not only about journalistic standards but also about how the people in the films are handled. If Hollywood now has regularized the hiring of intimacy coordinators to protect paid actors in scripted productions, some are asking if it’s time to provide psychological support and safety measures for people exposing their real-life traumas — who are rarely paid for their participation.Margie Ratliff, who was 20 in 2002 when she was filmed for The Staircase, a wrenching documentary about her father’s trial on charges of killing his wife, and who now wishes she could be edited out, is starting the nonprofit Documentary Participants Empowerment Alliance. “We want to make sure to have lawyers and mental health facilitators available when participants need on-site help,” says Ratliff — who was paid nothing for The Staircase or the 2022 HBO scripted spinoff of the same name — “or help with a contract to know what they’re signing and also resources for filmmakers.”
The creative team also used Colaio to produce video fundraising appeals, which were designed to be highly emotional in order to encourage folks to donate. Part of the proceeds that were meant to fund the movie’s creation came from an Indiegogo campaign dated for 2017 that raised a total of $62,805 from a total of 299 backers, who were mostly family and friends of those who died in the terrorist attack.
The audit also revealed that a total of $37,000 was then spent on public relations and marketing for the movie, which, as noted, has not been released. Part of this expense included $8,000 to a veteran entertainment publicist named Orna Pickens. The article’s author spoke with Pickens on the phone about the work she did for the documentary in 2017. Pickens said she’s not sure why anyone would be writing about the project all this time later, noting she felt bad for Sarah, who put a lot of time and effort into the project.
At one point, Rogers come out and reveals that Bordo, who started out the project driving an SUV, started to talk about buying a Porsche, a custom made one.
“She starts one day talking about buying a Porsche, custom,” Rogers reveals. “She said that it was a present to herself. But it was confusing to me because she was also at the same time telling us that she was broke because of the film.”
Public records show that at one point Bordo drove a 2019 Porsche Cayenne, a model with a base price of $65,700. Bordo confirms that she did buy a car, but would not say the brand. Bordo says she sold it to raise funds for We Go Higher. “I had a car for 18 years and then I decided that I deserved a new car,” Bordo said. “And I broke my own rules. I was so focused on finishing the film. I was so focused on interviewing every kid that raised their hand. I was so focused on not disappointing Delaney or Delaney’s beautiful family, her mom June, her grandfather Victor, who I called Papa, that I compromised myself, my health, my intuition, just trying to be the good little director, the good little filmmaker, like, ‘OK, I have this amount of money. Let me just sell my car and then we can use that.’”
Rogers then spilled the beans about Bordo constantly complaining about having a lack of money, yet insisting that her flights be booked as either business class or first class.
So it seems a project that was supposed to honor the lives of those who died during 9/11 and allow the voices of the victims’ children to be heard, turned into a way of embezzling money for the creative team behind it. That is a horrific crime to say the least.
Maybe one day we’ll finally get to see the film and those kids who were young when it was made will be given an opportunity to be heard.