Indie distributor Abramorama has released the first trailer for “The Outsider,” a look at the challenges Michael Shulan, creative director of the National 9/11 Museum at Ground Zero, faced.
The documentary, which will have a livestreamed premiere on Aug. 19, launches nationwide the following day and will play in select theaters in September.
“The Outsider” follows Shulan, a struggling novelist and owner of a storefront space in New York’s trendy Soho neighborhood. After the attacks on the World Trade Center, he turned his studio into a crowdsourced photo exhibit called “Here Is New York: A Democracy of Photographs.”
Invited to his role as creative director, Shulan starts to run into conflicts and challenges to get his vision off the ground.
The film’s directors Pamela Yoder and Steven Rosenbaum, the team behind “7 Days in September” and “Overcome,” have spent 20 years archiving and documenting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and are considered the world’s leading historians on the tragedy.
For “The Outsider,” their team had unlimited access to the memorial and internal meetings to deliver a look at the museum’s curatorial process and reflect the complicated feelings Americans have about 9/11 today. The film includes never-before-seen footage collected over eight years and follows Shulan’s journey from the day of 9/11 to the building’s opening in 2014.
Per its logline, “The team began with a shared vision to create a powerful destination that would invite Americans to think deeply about 9/11, its history, and the future of America in the post-9/11 world. But as pressure mounted, Shulan’s museum faced growing opposition from Alice Greenwald, the museum’s director. The documentary team watched as the conflict grew, and as complex questions that arose out of 9/11 were left unasked.”
Watch the trailer below.
