December 13, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Tim Fehlbaum
Some language in German with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Munich, Germany on September 5, 1972, the dramatic film “September 5” (based on real events) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Middle Eastern people and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: ABC Sports staffers and their associates grapple with how to cover a live news event when Palestinian terrorists take Israeli hostages during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
Culture Audience: “September 5” will appeal primarily to people interested in historical dramas that have good acting and well-directed suspense.
“September 5” is a dramatic recreation of an ABC TV control room during the tragic massacre of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. This suspenseful and well-acted movie exposes the ethical dilemmas in televising live kidnappings and murders. Although the outcome of this tragedy is well-known to many viewers, seeing this recreation can still have a tremendous impact.
Directed by Tim Fehlbaum (who co-wrote the “September 5” screenplay with Moritz Binder and Alex David), “September 5” had its world premiere at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival. There have been other movies about the massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics—such as director Steven Spielberg’s 2005 drama “Munich”—but “September 5” is the first to take a comprehensive look at this tragedy from the perspectives of the mostly American TV employees who decided to do a live telecast of the hostage-taking event, which was watched by more than 900 million people worldwide.
“September 5,” as the title indicates, takes place in Munich on September 5, 1972, which was the day of this tragedy. The movie begins by showing a seemingly mundane explanation (with voiceover narraton) of technicalities involved in televising the Olympics live on this particular date. ABC Sports is sharing the telecast that day with CBS Sports. The time slots allotted to each network will later become a source of contention when the hostage taking begins and each network competes with the other over who will have the rights to broadcast this live event.
“September 5” doesn’t overstuff the story with too many characters. Behind the scenes, the four main characters who are shown making the most pivotal decisions are:
- Roone Arledge (played by Peter Sarsgaard), the shrewd and ambitious president of ABC Sports.
- Martin Bader (played by Ben Chaplin), the logical-minded chief of operations for ABC Sports.
- Geoffrey “Geoff” Mason (played by John Magaro), a resourceful producer for ABC Sports,
- Marianne Gebhardt (played by Leonie Benesch), a German TV employee hired by ABC Sports to be a translator.
The day begins ordinarily enough, but there’s a little bit of tension between Martin and Marianne when they first meet each other. Martin (who is Jewish) is a little uneasy about being in Germany, the country where Nazi leader Adolf Hitler rose to power. The Holocaust is very much on his mind when Martin aks Marianne if her parents are still alive.
When she says yes, he replies sarcastically, “Let me guess. They didn’t know.” Marianne looks taken aback and somewhat offended that Martin assumes her parents were among the Germans who pretended not to know about the Holocaust while the Holocaust was happening. She calmly responds and says about her parents: “I’m not them.”
“September 5” doesn’t waste time with idle chit chat and personal backstories of each of the main characters. The hostage-taking happens within the first 15 minutes of this 95-minute movie. Everyone in the control room has to react swiftly to this crisis: 10 people from the Israeli Olympic team (five athletes and five coaches/officials) were captured after terrorists broke into the Olympic Village and held the victims hostage in an Olympic Village apartment.
The first thing that the media had to find out and accurately report was who was behind this kidnapping. The answer: a militant Palestinian group called Black September. Roone hesitates to use the word “terrorists” to describe these captors on TV, until Marianne tells Roone that the local German media are using the word “terrorists” to describe the captors. Also giving an international perspective to ABC Sports team is French-born TV executive Jacques Lesgardes (played by Zinedine Soualem), who is ABC Sports director of broadcast operations and engineering in Europe
Roone is adamant in telling his team that audiences will care more about the story if they know personal things about the kidnapping victims. And so, there’s a scramble to find any personal stories about any of the victims. Because it’s a TV broadcast, the kidnapped person who had the most TV footage avalable at the time gets a lion’s share of the coverage.
As seen in “September 5,” ABC Sports team gives most of the “personal story” focus to kidnapping victim David Berger (played by Rony Herman), an American who moved to Israel to pursue is dream of becoming an Olympic wrestler after he wasn’t selected for Team USA for Olympic wrestling. It just so happened that ABC had interviewed David in previously unaired footage, so that footage is shown during the crisis. David is also the only American-born hostage, so Roone believes that American viewers will feel more invested in this story if they knew an American is among those taken hostage.
As the hostage crisis stretches over several hours, ABC and CBS clash over who would have the official telecast when ABC’s time slot ended. The movie shows how ABC was still able to get “credit” for the telecast, even when the footage was coming from CBS’s feed: An ABC logo sticker was put on the side of the main camera-feed screen, so that ABC viewers would still think that the live footage was coming ABC’s control room, when the footage was really coming from CBS.
In addition to ABC’s conflicts with CBS, there were conflicts within ABC ranks. Roone resisted attempts from ABC News to take over the reporting from ABC Sports. Even though ABC Sports was not experienced in “hard news” journalism, Roone argued that ABC Sports was better-equipped to be in control of ABC’s telecast of this crisis because the ABC Sports team had more experience covering live events, and ABC Sports staffers were already in Munich, compared to the ABC News staffers who were in the United States. Roone huffs to his ABC Sports team: “This is our story, and we’re keeping it!”
ABC News reporter Peter Jennings (played by Benjamin Walker) is one of the ABC News people who’s portrayed as one of the “snobs” who questioned the capabilities of the ABC Sports people to handle this live telecast. “September 5” includes some of the actual news footage from ABC or realistic recreations of ABC News anchor Jim McKay doing live coverage of the crisis from his anchor desk in Munich. There is also actual archival footage in other parts of “September 5.”
On a less obvious but still noticeable level, “September 5” also shows yet another battle during this crisis: the battle of the sexes. In this very male-dominated environment, Marianne is often treated dismissively by some of the men, even though she is a valuable member of the team. At one point, she’s asked to get coffee, as if she’s a low-level production assistant. However, Marianne often shows she’s much more astute than many of the men who have more important titles than she does.
Two men on the team express condescending surprise that a woman was chosen to be a negotiator for this crisis. They scoff at the sight (from a TV news camera stationed outside) of the negotiator and say she looks unprofessional because she has asked the kidnappers for a light for her cigarette. Marianne comments: “No, she’s gaining their trust.” Marianne later points out that choosing a woman to negotiate is actually a great idea because the hostage takers might underestimate her because she’s a woman.
“September 5” includes some of the clever ways that the ABC Sports team was able to get exclusive footage during this crisis. One idea that worked was having camera operator Gary Slaughter (played by Daniel Adeosun) sneak into Olympic Village by posing as an athlete and placing a hidden camera in a strategic area close to where the hostages were being held. Creating a fake ID for Gary was also part of this impromptu plan.
But having a camera so close to the hostage area created a new set of issues, such as: What if any hostages were killed? How much (if any) of this worst possible outcome should be shown on live TV? These questions and other dilemmas weigh heavily on the people in the control room who know that whatever decisions they make will have long-term repercussions.
The tension in “September 5” doesn’t let up, thanks to the movie’s tight pacing. An unrealistic movie would have had the ABC people constantly shouting in a panic as the violence in this hostage crisis escalated. Instead, “September 5” more accurately shows that people in the control room were often stunned and shocked into silence. The movie also depicts that it’s never far from the broadcasters’ minds that what they were showing on TV would be a major trauma to unknown numbers of audience members.
The talented cast members of “September 5” do a very good job of portraying people who are seeing real-life horror unfold before their eyes, but they have to maintain enough professional composure to do their jobs as journalists and objectively cover this news event without interfering in this event. Sarsgaard, Magaro, Chaplin and Benesch all have moments that show how all four of their characters were essential as moving parts to this team. Although there is no happy ending to this story, “September 5” serves as a meaningful reminder of the importance of empathetic humanity in journalism when reporting things that are very inhumane.
Paramount Pictures released “September 5” in select U.S. cinemas on December 13, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on January 17, 2025.
