A new documentary, premiering in Manhattan this month, tells a Sept. 11 story rooted not only in loss, but also in what followed — a legacy of service that began in a Five Towns home and extended halfway around the world.
“Zzaslow K-427,” set to premiere on Sunday at the Dances With Films festival at Regal Union Square, traces the journey of a black Labrador retriever that became the longest-serving mine-detection dog of the post-9/11 era. But the film’s emotional focus is on Ira Zaslow, a North Woodmere father whose life, and death, shaped so much that came afterward.
Zaslow was an assistant vice president at Lehman Brothers, on the 38th floor of Tower 1 of the World Trade Center. He died in the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Losing my dad was a catalyst to start the organization,” Ira’s son Bryan Zaslow said.
Within a month after the attacks, Bryan had begun working to establish the Ira Zaslow Foundation, with the purpose of providing children a safe and encouraging environment in which to grow and play. The foundation’s goals also include honoring the victims of the attacks and ridding the future of terrorism.
“I felt it was important to keep him with me, and it felt incredible to start this to make a difference, and to remember how great of a man he was,” Bryan said. “I also was able to learn about him on a grander level.”
In the years after his death, Ira Zaslow’s name became better known in the community he loved. North Woodmere honored him by renaming the block he lived on, Flanders Drive, Ira Zaslow Drive.
“He was my dad before he was anything else,” Adam Zaslow, Bryan’s younger brother and the writer and producer of “Zzaslow K-427,” said. “I wanted people to know who he was, not just how he died.”
Rather than centering on the destruction of 9/11, the film opens in New York City, alive, crowded and vibrant, before the audience meets Ira Zaslow. One of its most poignant moments is an ordinary one: Adam wakes his father late at night to talk about the basketball star Michael Jordan, unaware that it would be their last conversation.
“That’s the memory I hold on to,” Adam said. “It wasn’t dramatic. It was just us, and that’s what makes it sacred.”
As the attacks take place, the film resists spectacle, instead focusing on the psychological burden of waiting and, ultimately, loss. Viewers are taken on Adam’s emotional journey, and identify with the irrational wish that, somehow, his father would make it home.
“As the events of 9/11 unfold, the film remains horrifying despite our knowing how it ends,” Sara Matathias, a Woodmere native and a childhood friend of Adam’s, said. “I found myself wishing irrationally and desperately that Ira would somehow make it out of the towers.”
From the devastation, the story evolves toward purpose. Through Tuesday’s Children, the nonprofit that supports families impacted by 9/11, Adam became involved in a puppy-raising program that ultimately connect him to a Lab being trained for military service that was named Zzaslow.
The dog was later paired with U.S. Army handler Juan J. Colón-Estrada, and went on to complete three combat deployments in Afghanistan, detecting explosives and saving lives.
“To see something good come out of something so painful was overwhelming,” Adam said. “Zzaslow carried my father’s legacy in a way I never could have imagined.”
Directed by Robert Ham, the film details Zzaslow’s service while emphasizing quiet heroism rather than drama. It also highlights the bond between service dog and handler, a partnership built on trust in life-and-death situations.
“That emotional pull is a testament to the film’s storytelling power,” Matathias said.
Since its Los Angeles premiere in June, “Zzaslow K-427” has been screened at Dances With Films LA; the Lighthouse International Film Festival, on Long Beach Island, N.J.; the Austin Film Festival, in Texas; and the Gig Harbor Film Festival, in Gig Harbor, Wash., where it received the Founder’s Award. It has also been shown at Lackland Air Force Base, in Texas, and Fort Leonard Wood, in Missouri.
The New York City premiere will mark a full-circle moment for a story that began in the Five Towns.
After the festival run, the filmmakers plan to pursue distribution with major streaming platforms, and there has already been discussion of adapting the documentary into a scripted feature film.
For Adam, the film is both tribute and testimony, honoring his father while illuminating the men, women and animals that faced danger long after Sept. 11 had receded from the headlines. “My dad didn’t get to see what came next,” Adam said. “This film is about carrying that forward and about service, connection and what it means to keep your heart open after loss.”
