On the face of it, “September 5”, which goes on general release next weekend, tells the story of how an American sports broadcasting crew finds itself thrust into covering the hostage crisis involving Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics.
It was a brutal event during which eight gunmen from the Palestinian militia Black September killed two members of the Israeli team, taking a further nine members hostage. In a failed rescue attempt, all nine athletes were killed, alongside five of the eight Black September members plus a local policeman.
It was a world event broadcast to 900 million people, and arguably the first iteration of modern terrorism. Given the zeitgeist, it is an apposite, gripping film that captures the intense atmosphere of the crisis from the perspective of sports broadcasters, highlighting the technical and moral challenges faced by the ABC Sports team.
How to report from the frontline about an unfolding tragedy far removed from athletic performance? How to analyse and distil what was occurring? How to contextualise it given Germany’s tangled history, World War II’s ending having come just 27 years previously? Can they broadcast someone being killed live on television?
Director Tim Fehlbaum cleverly splices the film with with archival footage to enhance the realism and context of the story. Much of it, like the handballers continuing to play while the drama unfolds, or athletes casually playing table tennis, is jarring, but effective at portraying the extremes of the situation. Uncertainty, and even chaos at times, underpins much of the visual takes, giving a strong sense of just how tough it must have been to make decisions on the fly, chiefly for an American audience waking to the news. Panic and tension fly through the film, which is up for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars.
The film also raises a number of questions that are more important to address than ever, notes Fehlbaum.
“Beside our goal of telling a fast-paced, thrilling story, the film also sheds light on this historical event from a very specific perspective and I believe that the combination of these elements will hopefully create an exciting, and simultaneously thought-provoking experience for audiences.”
“The fact that this was the first time that such a traumatic and tragic event was shared globally and in real time has been forgotten,” actor John Magaro reflects. “It wasn’t that long ago that the way we consume news changed, and it changed in that moment with people who were in a lot of ways ill-equipped to deal with it, and they put terms into the zeitgeist that are still used today. There was no chance for them to think, ‘Is this the right thing to say?’ They just had to go with it. And unfortunately, I think nowadays, in media that has only been amplified where there isn’t a lot of thought of consequence, there’s only action.”
