September 5 (2025)

Tim Fehlbaum’s tense journalistic political thriller, dealing with the events of the Munich Olympics terrorist attack by Black September, is utterly relentless. The story itself is one that has been approached on screen before, probably most notably by Steven Spielberg in Munich (2005); although Spielberg's film dealt primarily with the aftermath of the events, and the mission by Mossad to hunt down and kill the Palestinians responsible for the event.

Fehlbaum's film plays out as a media procedural, and we follow the ABC TV's sports crew as they initially cover the games as a sports channel would; it's noted that this was the first Olympics to be broadcast live by satellite. After an impressive and intriguing opening sequence, in which we're reminded of all the intricate details and work needed to provide such a service over fifty years ago, gunfire is heard from the Olympic village, and the team scrabble to find out what's going on whilst frantically ringing staff that have gone home or have the day off, to haul them back in for what is groundbreaking television.

It's astonishing to think that when the hostage situation unfolds (the Black September militant group infiltrated the Olympic village, and killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team before taking nine hostage) this is the first time anything like this has been seen live on television. As the young studio director Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) stipulates at one point, "this could be the first execution live on television", and it's not hard to feel the force politically and culturally of what exactly is unfolding here; Jews once more could be brutally murdered on German soil, less than thirty years after the second World War.

In fact, this is such a potential problem politically that the German police response is muddled in the extreme; they simply don't know how to respond; resulting in officers who have never handled weaponry before being thrust into the frontline of what's unfolding, along with some truly terrible decision making.

The future of News broadcasting can be glimpsed repeatedly throughout September 5, especially in a sequence in which the ABC newsroom realise to their horror that the terrorists themselves might be able to see exactly which manoeuvres the police are planning- because they have a television in the room in which they're holding the hostages, and are watching the ABC news footage.

We don't see films like this as much as I'd like anymore. The touchstone of this sort of thing remains All the President's Men (1976), although George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck (2005) also wouldn't be out of place with a comparison here. However, neither of these are set in real time, and neither portray such horrors as September 5. If you want the ultimate overview of the events that overshadowed the Munich Olympics in film form you'd do well to check out Kevin Macdonald's superb documentary One Day in September (1999); but here Fehlbaum admirably transposes a different side of the story to screen with September 5, albeit at a somewhat light ninety minutes, and if you can see it in the cinema, I suggest you do. 7.8/10