Étienne Sauret on AllMovie

Independent filmmaker Étienne Sauret has worked as a freelance video engineer for television programs across North and South America. His international motorcycle documentary Lazy Man's Zen was shown on the Discovery Channel in 1995, and he made his narrative directorial debut with the romance Too Pure, with a screenplay by French writer Yves Ramonet. Sauret is probably best-known for his series of documentaries regarding the events of September 11, 2001. As he happened to be in New York City on the day itself, Sauret captured what he could on camera; with editing by Tracy Granger, the footage became WTC: The First 24 Hours. Featuring minimal dialogue and no narration, the independent documentary short was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002. (The film also plays every hour at the New York Historical Society.) Sauret spent the next year interviewing members of the New York Fire Department. He visited fire stations from Manhattan to Brooklyn, talking with different firefighters and rescue workers. This led to the documentary short Loss, an elegy for six firefighters who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center. In 2003, Sauret completed two more documentary shorts in the series: Billy Green 9-11 and Collateral Damages.