By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CHELSEA — Ten years after Sept. 11, Liz and Steve Alderman still don't have the company of their son — but thanks to the way they channeled that grief, hundreds of thousands of victims of violence have access to mental health care.
The global foundation that the Aldermans created in honor of their son Peter (who was just 25 when he died at the World Trade Center) is only one of three stories told in "Love Hate Love," a documentary that held its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival Tuesday night.
The film also follows Bali bombing survivor Ben Tullipan's mentorship of fellow amputees, and Brit Esther Hyman's efforts to memorialize her art-loving sister (killed in a bus bomb during 2005's London terror attacks) through the creation of a children's eye care center in India.
"You always say that if terrorists change your behavior, they've won,"Hyman said Sunday at Chelsea's Gem Hotel, where she met Tullipan and Liz Alderman in person for the first time. "Actually our behaviors have all changed — but for the better."
For directors Don Hardy and Dana Nachman (who got a boost from executive producer Sean Penn, introduced to them by Sept. 11 widower Jack Grandcolas), telling the stories of how exactly behavioral shifts transformed the lives of others came with significant challenges.
With a limited budget, they couldn't travel to the U.K. or Australia to meet Hyman or Tullipan in person before finalizing the decision to feature them, Hardy said. They couldn't scout locations in Uganda, where the Aldermans have built a traumatic depression and PTSD clinic for victims of mass violence.
The simple question of whether or not mental health and failing eyesight were topics that could be conveyed visually plagued Nachman. In lighter moments, the directors also struggled over whether a request to include U2's 1987 song "One Tree Hill" should be addressed "Dear Edge"or "Dear The Edge" (the song holds special significance to Grandcolas, who heard it on his first date with his wife, killed on United 93).
The band ultimately agreed to be a part of the soundtrack, as did Radiohead and Bruce Springsteen.
That same drive that propelled Hardy and Nachman through each challenge also endeared them to the Aldermans, Hymans and Tullipan. Even after all the good each family has done, they continues to dream of doing more.
The Aldermans just signed an agreement to open a new clinic in Liberia, according to Liz, a former special education teacher. The couple next plans to place services in a Nairobi slum and institutionalize their Bedford, N.Y.-based foundation so it survives after their own deaths.
Not content with the clinic in India, Esther Hyman plans to use her sister's memorial trust to create a 7/7 attacks electronic education resource for use in London schools. And in Australia, Tullipan continues to bring in ten new members each month into the Queensland Amputee Golf Association.
"It's all attitude,"Tullipan, who was told he would never walk again before he learned to do so on prosthetic legs, said with a shrug. "If you put your mind to something, don't let anything get in your way."
But for Liz Alderman, even after all her accomplishments, she said she still hates to imply that any good at all has come from Peter's death.
"Nothing ever takes the pain away, or makes the loss any easier," Alderman said. "I don't think anybody can know anything about Peter unless they've met him. I think what they'll know [from the film] is how much he was loved."
"Love Hate Love"will screen again in New York around the tenth anniversary of Sept. 11, as well as in London and Bali. The filmmakers are currently working out plans for distribution in theaters.
