September 5

When the first gunshots ring out announcing Black September’s attack on the Israeli athletic team at the start of historical thriller September 5, the news team smoking cigarettes outside their off-village base don’t initially register what’s going on. It also signals the start of filmmaker Tim Fehlbaum’s choice to keep the ensuing horror at arm’s length, while the small team from ABC Sports stumble through what will become a historic day for news reporting.

For this is where Fehlbaum puts the film’s focus: on the men and woman behind the broadcast, with the events largely playing out on studio monitors. John Magaro, a convincingly anxious yet energetic presence, drives the story as Geoffrey Mason, a relatively green studio director who clocks in for what he thinks will be a day of live games coverage, only to be thrown into documenting a perilous stand-off while the world watches. Crucial to the operation is Marianne Gebhardt (a scene-stealing Leonie Benesch), a translator and the only person who can speak Hebrew and German; while Peter Sarsgaard’s Roone Arledge handles the conversations with network ABC. The film is carried by this handful of performances. Each operates well on their own frequency.

An erudite and well-performed ode to journalism.

It makes for a tense, lean love letter to TV reporting reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin, albeit with much shorter bouts of walking and talking (ABC’s headquarters are distressingly cramped). Graphics are applied by hand, cameras are smuggled beyond police borders by disguised press, and Fehlbaum uses real archive footage of anchor Jim McKay for the actors to interact with to help turn the small space into an immersive experience. Cinematographer Markus Förderer, meanwhile, opts for handheld cameras and vintage lenses to mimic the technology of the time.

By keeping away from the hostage situation itself, the film’s stakes do sometimes feel stunted. More time seems to be given to Arledge battling it out with the bigwigs back home than to the far knottier and more pressing political issues playing out in the Olympic village. Folding that drama into September 5 might have made for a richer film, but it nevertheless succeeds as an erudite and well-performed ode to journalism in an analogue age.