Ms. Westfeldt debuted her movie at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 10, 2001, just hours before the attacks. She recalled the joy she felt after her film, replete with gauzy, golden-hour shots of the towers, was applauded. A New Yorker, she awoke the next day to news of the attacks and spent the next 48 hours camped in front of a TV, crying and contacting loved ones.

Her movie had a second screening on Sept. 12, she said, and “the people who went basically reported back that there were audible gasps and sobs at those images.”

“It was just gut-wrenching,” she added. “All these images that were meant to be beautiful and romantic were now harrowing and triggering in the midst of a rom-com that was intended to make you laugh, not traumatize you.”

Ms. Westfeldt said she and her colleagues debated intensely about whether to leave in the Trade Center scenes and risk “inflicting more pain on people,” or remove them and possibly “erase or misrepresent history.” In the end, they chose to reshoot the scenes. She asks herself now whether the original scenes might have stood the test of time as the despair of losing the towers ebbed.

Michael Nozik , producer of the 2002 movie “People I Know,” starring Al Pacino, felt the same way. “We wanted to make sure we were not seen as exploitative and insensitive at a time when there was so much grief,” he said of the reshoot. Now, he said, “It’s nice to look at all the beautiful images of the Trade Center because it’s more like honoring them than the horror of recalling that event.”

Some directors, though, do not support altering a pre-9/11 picture based on post-9/11 sensibilities. Among them is Michael Bay , the maker of “Armageddon,” a 1998 summer disaster flick that shows one of the towers ablaze after a meteor strike.