‘Emotional train wreck’: Filming of Swissair Flight 111 movie hits close to home

Set to premiere next year, the film "111" is a production that follows the stories of four people in the aftermath of the Sept. 2, 1998 Swissair crash near Peggy’s Cove, N.S.

Kris Holden-Ried, clad in a dark pea coat and bright red scarf, stands in a patch of sunlight on the edge of Griffin’s Pond in the Halifax Public Gardens, with the early morning light casting a glow on him as he looks across the water.

The Canadian-born actor isn’t taking in the sights of the lush trees and urban waterfowl — he’s shooting a film in which he plays Saul, a bereaved father from Westchester, N.Y., recently arrived in Halifax to identify the remains of his son killed in the crash of Swissair Flight 111.

Set to premiere next year, the film “111” is a joint Canadian-Swiss production that follows the interwoven stories of four people in the aftermath of the Sept. 2, 1998 Swissair crash near Peggy’s Cove, N.S. The MD-11 jet plunged into the Atlantic Ocean about 70 minutes into a routine flight from New York City to Geneva after a fire broke out in the ceiling and caused several system failures. All 229 people on board were killed.

Director Mauro Mueller said the film focuses on people, not the crash itself, and on the hope that emerges from grief.

“(The crash) is very much in the consciousness of all the Swiss, but also the Canadian (people),” Mueller said in an on-set interview with The Canadian Press on the crew’s last day of filming in Nova Scotia. “We know what happened. It didn’t make sense to really dramatize the crash in itself and the tragedy.”

In addition to Saul, the drama follows two Swiss characters: one who loses her mother and a Swiss airline worker who travels to Halifax after the crash as part of a care team. The film also follows some of the Nova Scotia fishermen who were the first ones on the water to search for survivors.

Nova Scotia was especially rocked by the crash. Several fishers raced out to Peggy’s Cove — a famous tourist site southwest of Halifax — as soon as they heard the thunderous boom of the plane hitting the ocean, only to return plagued by the horrors of the scene.

Holden-Ried, who has also appeared in the television series “The Umbrella Academy,” said filming in Nova Scotia added to the weight of an already emotional project. Many of the locals he spoke to when shooting in Peggy’s Cove had a personal story about the tragedy. Hearing those stories, he said, contributed to the sense of “enormous responsibility” of getting the film done right.