It's been nearly a decade since much of the downtown area was evacuated as a Korean Air plane believed to have been hijacked was diverted to the Whitehorse airport.

Later this month, Yukoners will have a chance to take a look back at that day's dramatic events with Never Happen Here – The Whitehorse 9/11 Story.

Max Fraser's 45-minute documentary will have its first showing April 24 at the Dawson City International Short Film Festival. It will be the final work shown during the festival.

The film will then be screened at the Yukon Arts Centre in Whitehorse from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. April 26.

"I'm honoured that the Dawson festival has selected my film and given it a special profile as the final film of the festival this year,” Fraser said in a statement.

"Dawson is recognizing the importance of this film to the Yukon and to the local filmmaking community.”

Fraser has been working on the film for more than four years, with much of the focus being on the many parents like himself who raced to find their kids. Schools had been evacuated as the airliner came into the city after the terrorist attacks in the United States earlier in the day. Fraser soon learned his daughter wasn't at her school, but at his wife's office.

"Nowhere else in the world on 9/11 was a community under an evacuation order, and nowhere else were emergency authorities told to prepare for a mass casualty incident involving a hijacked airliner,” Fraser said.

"Korean Air Flight 085 was the only plane in the sky that day to transmit a hijack signal. What we experienced, what we went through, is a story that should be told the world over. And the time for that story to be told is now.”

Along with talking to parents, teachers and students about their 9/11 experiences, Fraser's research took him through several Freedom of Information and Access to Information requests from a number of sources involved.

Those requests turned up audio tapes and documents featured in the film that reveal new information on how the events happened.

Previously secret documents and "chilling portions” of air traffic control audio between the Korean Air flight crew and the F-15 Eagle fighter jets that were prepared to shoot it down are all part of the film.

So is an interview with now-retired RCMP Insp. John Grant, who was the incident commander at the Whitehorse airport that day.

"I gathered information from as many sources as possible,” Fraser said.

"But the heart of the story is the parents, kids and teaching staff who were caught in the middle of a bizarre, surreal crisis. It's their stories which represent the experience of our community that day. It's local people telling their own stories which is what the film is really about.”

Fraser is advising parents and caregivers that the film may not be appropriate for children under 12 who might be sensitive to disturbing subject matter.

The filmmaker will also offer his thanks to the many people who helped out with the documentary by providing tickets to those people.

In particular, Fraser said, he wants to thank the parents in his daughter's class at the time, their teacher, Sofie Maurice, and now-retired principal Pat Berell.

Fraser is also pitching the film to broadcasters who might be interested in airing the documentary on Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of 9/11.