Daldry wants more 9/11 films

Stephen Daldry, whose Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close retells the deadly events of September 11, 2001 through the eyes of a New York boy, believes there should be more films about the attacks and their consequences.

His movie, which was released in US theatres in December, has divided critics and public opinion, and Daldry, who was presenting the picture at the Berlin film festival on Friday, conceded that some people believed it came out too soon.

The Briton said he approached Extremely Loud "with the honest awareness that some people would still find it was too soon, too much or too little, but in the end you have to trust your own instincts about what you think is appropriate."

The film stars Tom Hanks as a father killed in New York's World Trade Centre on 9/11, Sandra Bullock as his widow, newcomer Thomas Horn as his son and Max von Sydow as a mysterious old man who becomes close to the traumatised boy.

The movie features reconstructions of people falling from the towers and the final phone messages left by the father who was trapped inside the buildings after the planes struck.

"It amazes me that more films aren't made about 9/11," he told reporters at in Berlin. "I don't just mean the stories in New York, I mean stories from around the world about not just what happened and why it happened or who it happened to, but the consequences of what happened and how those consequences still reverberate in all our lives."