Before there was September 11, there was September 5, the decisive moment that forever changed media coverage and continues to impact live news today.
Set during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, the film, SEPTEMBER 5, follows the American television network ABC Sports broadcasting team who quickly shifted from sports reporting to live coverage of the Israeli athletes taken hostage.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated SEPTEMBER 5 for an Oscar for its original screenplay by Alex David, Moritz Binder and Tim Fehlbaum. Its lean, swift, judicious writing is text book thriller and contrasts mightily with the overwritten bloated brutalist scenarios on show at the mo.
Ambition and ethics are at the heart of the story as Geoff (John Magaro), a young and ambitious producer striving to prove himself to his boss, the legendary TV executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), is plunged into a much bigger story than even the Olympic Games. It’s an opportunity to go for broadcast gold juxtaposed against the many lives at stake and the moral decisions that needed to be made against an impossible ticking clock.
Director Tim Fehlbaum ingeniously inserts actual archival footage of the Olympics and crisis that the broadcasters view on the period monitors in their tight confines, as well as new footage lensed to match the archival material with an analog look, including some shot on 16mm film.
All of this played on the monitors in the control room, giving the actors a virtual verisimilitude to react to in real time while also serving as a practical light source, the flicker created subtly upping the tension.
Further creating the sensation of live coverage from the ’70s, SEPTEMBER 5 is shot mainly in long takes, handheld, with the intention to compress time.
SEPTEMBER 5 boasts a marvellous ensemble cast Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Zinedine Soualem, Georgina Rich, Corey Johnson, Marcus Rutherford, Daniel Adeosun, Benjamin Walker, Ferdinand Dörfler, all pitch perfect in this remarkable re-enactment of a pivotal point in history.