At the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, the morning of September 5 began like any other. The athletes were ready to compete, the fans were hyped, and the press readied themselves for another day of coverage. As the ABC Sports team filed into the control room to begin the day, they received a message that something was wrong in the Olympic Village. The details revealed that members of the Palestinian militant group Black September executed an armed attack and had taken eleven Israeli athletes hostage, demanding the release of hundreds of prisoners held in their country’s prisons. The day would end in tragedy, as all eleven hostages were killed. Director Tim Fehlbaum’s thriller “September 5” examines that fateful day, experiencing the seven-hour ordeal minute by minute as the events unfold from inside the cramped and hectic ABC control room.

There has been a good deal of films dealing with this tragic moment in World History. The two most recognizable would be Steven Spielberg’s 2005 historical thriller, Munich and Kevin Macdonald’s Oscar-winning Documentary, One Day in September. The subject has been handled in many different styles, but director Fehlbaum and his co-writers Moritz Binder and Alex David have contained the madness, uncertainty, and fear of that day into one setting. This unique take on the material allows “September 5” to feel fresh. Fehlbaum’s film is intense; it spreads its focus to the moral tightrope of complicity regarding the media and their coverage of such a tragic event. 

“September 5” is gripping in its depiction of the seventeen-hour ordeal, telling the story with a documentary feel. The audience is not put into the rooms where the terrorists take the athletes hostage but into the control room, where the technicians are unprepared for the events that are about to break. 

ABC producer Roone Arledge (a terrifically intense Peter Sarsgaard) is taking a much-needed break for the night. First-time TV producer Geoffrey Mason (an equally great John Magaro) is taking the reins. Unproven as a producer for such a mammoth undertaking, as his previous credits include only minor league baseball and golf, Mason is proving his worth when the Black September militants take 11 of the Israeli Olympians hostage. The young producer and everyone in the control room and on the ground are thrust into a situation none of them could possibly be prepared for, while Mason works hard to save the room from becoming total chaos. The ABC crew is the only American news crew in Munich, and it will be up to Mason and his crew to report accurately back to the country. 

Marvin Bader (a fantastic Ben Chaplin), the operations manager who got Mason the job, will be his right-hand man who helps hold it all together. A translator, Marianne (Leonie Benesch), proves to be an essential cog in the wheel of the day, as she is the only one who speaks fluent German and excels at overcoming the boys club who underestimates a woman’s work. 

Mason’s goal is to get their cameras as close to the Olympic Village as possible, where reporter Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker, doing a spot-on representation of the famous news anchor) and Jim McKay (depicted in actual footage) are fed info to relay to TV audiences.

Director Fehlbaum wrote the screenplay with Munich-born writer Moritz Binder and Alex David. In concentrating on the men in the control booth rather than the authorities, the two have crafted a film that will keep viewers’ nerves on edge from the moment the hostage situation begins. While the outcome of the day’s events is widely known, this doesn’t loosen the film’s tight grip. The tension is almost unbearable as cinematographer Markus Förderer’s handheld style puts us in the room as the minute-to-minute reports come in. The audience becomes a part of the stressful situation, experiencing it alongside the characters. 

This film is rightfully apolitical, focusing on the media’s role in covering real-time crises and how said coverage shapes the public’s perception. The meticulous design flawlessly captures the madness of many things happening simultaneously, building its tension naturally without any phony dramatic heft. The events of that day were intense enough, and what these people had thrust upon them was unthinkable. As the men and women in the ABC booth struggle to get the facts correct and argue over their moral and professional responsibilities, the unimaginable ethical questions combined with continuous technical roadblocks make for an intense cinematic experience made stronger by Fehlbaum’s documentary-style realism.

As Fehlbaum was in post-production, attacks resumed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The discussion of violence in political struggle and the media’s perception of who to label as terrorists became front-and-center relevant. The conflict has never been solved, and the tragedy of what happened at the 1972 Munich Olympics only begat more violence. This film’s focus on the media’s perspective speaks to how followers of the news will consume what they are fed when watching their choice of trusted news source. The powerful significance of what Mason, Arledge, Bader, and all of their team accomplished on that day is as remarkable as the events themselves. 

As today’s world experiences (and suffers) the consequences of how the modern media shapes and manipulates a story, the events and moralistic choices of that fateful day in 1972 continue to echo through our conscience. I was reminded of the quote from The Tempest, “What’s past is prologue.”  

“September 5” is powerful in its tension and all too relevant in examining journalistic ethics. Alongside films like “All the President’s Men,” “Absence of Malice” or “Spotlight” by Todd McCarthy, it’s one of the best representations of warts-and-all American journalism.