Oliver Stone arrives for a screening of 'Platoon' to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary at Cannes.
Photo: Reuters/Tom Boland

AdvertisementCannes viewers have had a powerful 20-minute glimpse of Oliver Stone's new movie World Trade Centre, the first US film to focus on the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers.

The film is "the true story of two New York Port Authority policemen who are trapped in the rubble, their wives and their children and the incredible and almost improbable rescue efforts to save them", Stone said ahead of the screening.

But the film is very sensitive in the United States, still deeply scarred by the 2001 attacks in which nearly 3,000 people died.

In the moving and impressive opening sequence, the audience sees dawn breaking over the city as Sergeant John McLouglin, played by Nicolas Cage, sets off for work for what seems like just another day.

A soft autumn morning glow hangs over the buildings and the World Trade Centre as McLouglin and the rest of his crew travel in to work, including William J Jimeno, played by Michael Pena.

Gradually come the sounds of the city -- birdsong, traffic noise and even a plane flying overhead.

As the men gather for their morning briefing, the most pressing issue is to find a missing runaway. But shortly afterwards, a huge bang shakes the Port Authority office, and McLoughlin and his men watch in disbelief at television images of smoke pouring through the gaping hole in Tower One.

They gather together oxygen tanks and breathing apparatus before trying to climb the tower, amid rumours that a second plane has flown into the second tower. But as they are about to head up, in a few terrifying seconds the tower comes crashing down, engulfing them.

The planes hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists are not seen, except in a shadow that hovers and then passes over a nearby building.

"Sometimes history is shaped by the collective memory of people, men and women, and here was a great chance to work with these people," Stone told the Cannes audience.

"And they gave us what I hope one day will be seen as the truth. For the truth must exist in some way to confront power and extremism."

The clip was shown ahead of a screening of Platoon to mark the film's 20th anniversary, and Stone was flanked by his principal actors in the film, Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe.

"Platoon changed their lives," said Stone, who was welcomed with loud applause when he arrived in the cinema.

"I would say the struggle of these 20 more years has been to try to make these stories about people who really see it with their own eyes and their own ears, whether they were in the jungles of Vietnam, the deserts of Iraq, or the rubble of the World Trade Centre," he added.

World Trade Centre goes on release from August 9 in the US, but the trailers were already being shown on Friday, prompting Paramount to send out warning letters.

"It's a very delicate trailer. It will be up to individual theatres to decide how to warn audiences," a Paramount spokesman said.

The film will be screened in Australia from October.

The US release comes one month ahead of the fifth anniversary of the attacks, in which terrorists in hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

A fourth plane bound for Washington, which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after a passenger uprising, has also been the subject of a movie, United 93 by director Paul Greengrass, which will be screened there on Friday.

Some critics have been nervous about Stone directing a film about the September 11 attacks as he has been publicly critical of President George W Bush's handling of the attacks and their aftermath.

But Stone has maintained it is not a political film and does not contain any conspiracy theories.