How do you report horror as it happens? And what happens to the reporter who keeps the camera rolling, even when the story turns very tragic?
September 5 is a gripping, grounded, and unsettling new film about the 1972 Munich massacre, where eleven Israeli athletes, coaches and five of the Palestinian kidnappers (Black September) were killed during the Olympic Games. Rather than retelling the events by relying on dramatizing the events or their aftermath (*clears throat*: Munich), the film zooms in on the long, harrowing day through an unexpected yet hyper effective lens: the ABC News broadcast team covering the Games.
It is a smart, layered approach. Instead of centering on the terrorists or the victims directly, the film shows the ripple effects of that day – from the first gunshots at 4:10 a.m. to the devastating conclusion at the Fürstenfeldbruck military airbase – through the people trying to make sense of the chaos in real-time. This is not just a film about terrorism. It is about media, ethics, ambition, and the cost of turning a tragedy into a story – that skyrockets the ratings.
One of September 5’s most impressive achievements is its seamless integration of archival footage. Thanks to last-minute clearance from Disney (which now owns ABC), real footage from the 1972 broadcast is threaded directly into the narrative. The newsroom, the anchor desk, and even the interview with the Israeli fencing coach who narrowly escaped the kidnappers that morning – all appear just as they were, lending the film a stark authenticity. At times, the viewer forgets where re-enactment ends and history begins.
That historical weight is anchored by a well-drawn ensemble of characters. Peter Sarsgaard plays Roone, the American executive producer, hungry for emotional impact over journalistic neutrality, and of course: to beat all the competing networks. He’s the kind of man who would air Holocaust footage from Dachau between sports segments – for its emotional impact. His counterpart, a Jewish-American overseeing producer Marv, played brilliantly by Ben Chaplin, questions these choices. He didn’t live through the Holocaust, but he carries its echoes, and his discomfort brings up the central moral dilemma: how far is too far when you’re broadcasting tragedy?
The film constantly returns to this tension. The broadcast team doesn’t know what will happen next – but they do know they have a camera pointed at the balcony where the hostages are held. Should they show it? What if someone dies on live television? Their instinct is always to roll tape first, ask questions later. But those questions come hard and fast, and they are layered: What are we doing? Why are we still filming? And who is this really for? Why were viewers watching from the cosy shelters of their homes? And why are we still watching today?
These themes play out through a range of characters, each with their own angle. A French-Algerian crew member, Jacques (Zinedine Soualem) can’t get the right cable for his setup – blocked by a prickly German technician who resents the presence of outsiders at “their” Games. She gets help from a young assistant – translator, played by the ever-so wonderful Leonie Benesch, who also becomes the emotional center of the film. Torn between the love for her country and mounting horror, she is the one who must help bridge communication between nations, between agendas, between generations still haunted by Germany’s recent past.
We should not forget: the Games were Germany’s attempt to “rebrand” itself post-World War II – as a peaceful, open host for the world’s greatest sporting event as well as to all nations from all over the globe. But the veneer crumbles under pressure. The film doesn’t shy away from showing how disastrously the German police handled the situation: rejecting Israeli military assistance, attempting an absurd undercover mission with disguised officers posing as chefs, and ultimately losing control of a crisis they were never prepared for.
Shot almost entirely within the confines of a single newsroom, Markus Förderer’s (I Origins) cinematography makes the most of the limited space, turning constraint into strength. The cold, solid, and elegant color palette adds weight and tension, while the texture-rich visuals lend a tactile sense of time and place. The authenticity of the set – meticulously crafted to reflect actual 1970s newsrooms – grounds the drama in a strikingly real world.
September 5 avoids finger-pointing or political soapboxing. It remains surprisingly apolitical. Instead, it draws its tension from the real-time decisions made by the ABC team, who invent new techniques on the fly to cover the events. A young broadcast director (on his first day running an entire show) played by John Magaro, decides to place a bulky long-lens camera on a nearby hill to capture the hostage building. One of their photographers sneaks into the Olympic Village with a fake press pass, posing as a weightlifter. Another crew member, Peter, gets caught inside the lockdown and becomes an unintentional eyewitness. When the police begin evacuating the village, the entire newsroom shouts through the phone: “Hide!” – not “Run,” but “Hide,” so that he can keep on reporting.
By the end, the filmmakers offer no easy resolutions – as there was none. Instead, the movie presents brutal facts: 900 million people watched the hostage situation unfold live. It was the first terrorist attack televised in real time. The numbers flash on screen not just to inform, but to implicate. We watched then. We’re watching now.
Are we learning? Or just consuming?
September 5 never answers that question, and wisely so. It simply lays out the story – with precision, tension, and chilling calm. The script is tight and thoughtful, always adding a new moral wrinkle just when you think you’ve settled into a perspective – it was fully worthy of its Oscar nomination. Director Tim Fehlbaum (The Colony) and his team, refuse to over-dramatize the events, and that is one of the film’s greatest strengths. No slow-motion heroics. No sweeping score. Just the quiet horror of professionals doing their job in the middle of a waking nightmare.
This is not just a film for history buffs. It’s for anyone who’s ever pointed a camera – or consumed what it captured, or interested in works in newsrooms. It asks uncomfortable questions about what it means to document tragedy, and whether storytelling itself has a moral line.
Ultimately, September 5 is less about the massacre itself than it is about how we see tragedy, and who controls the lens. The ongoing, tragic, conflict in the region still casts a long shadow, one that inevitably took a toll on the release of this carefully crafted film as well.
Now streaming on Apple TV and Prime Video.
~ by Dora Endre ~
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