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| September 5 |
Director Tim Fehlbaum's September 5, co-written with Moritz Binder and Alex David, revisits the first time a terrorist attack was broadcast live on international television. Set in the ABC control room at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, it sees the American sports broadcaster, led by TV executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), pivot from covering sport to an unprecedented situation, when the Palestinian militant group Black September takes the Israeli Olympic team hostage. Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), a young producer, his mentor Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) and German interpreter Marianne (Leonie Benesch) work in unprecedented circumstances to document one of history’s darkest chapters.
September 5 is Binder's first feature screenplay. His other writing credits include the long-running anthology crime series Tatort (1970-); München Mord (2013-), about a trio of criminal investigators; and Neue Geschichten vom Pumucki (2023). Binder has also showcased his art installations at the Academy of Fine Arts and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Binder discussed the film's timeliness, and how it forces us all to reconsider the media and our relationship to it.
Paul Risker: From the opening scenes, it seems that September 5 effortlessly immerses its audience in the drama, taking us inside an unprecedented and harrowing episode of history.
Moritz Binder: This is what we tried to achieve, and you probably know a movie is made three times: in the writing, on the set and in the edit. So, we tried to write a page turner and the great thing is I wrote this with Tim, who had every scene in his head for two years. He knew what he wanted and we also had a great editor. We tried to create for the audience the adrenaline rush that the journalists experienced and what that day felt like.
PR: This forces the audience to engage with the drama's moral complexities and, like the characters, ask questions.
MB: It's great that you said that because we didn't want to judge. These were sports journalists who were reporting on the swimming race and within hours had to pivot to a field they had never covered before — they were trying so hard to make it happen.
We were blessed because we had the real Geoffrey Mason, played by John Magaro, going through the draft of the script. He was explaining that there was such limited time for the ethical questions because first, they simply had to make it work. They had to get the bird, which they called the satellite. They had to try to get enough cable for the camera to see if the set-up would work. Then, when everything does work, there's the moment you ask, "Okay, now it's live, what does live mean?" This is why we tried to place the audience with the characters, so you were rooting for them to get it done, and then in that moment you realise for the first time, "Oh yeah, I haven't thought about that either. What would I do?" So, I'm very happy that, as a journalist, you felt that.
PR: They were covering sports, but Roone Arledge was already looking ahead to the next day's boxing match between the US and Cuba, with a political slant. What is fascinating is how quickly they go from using politics as a part of the storytelling, to live reporting of a major political news story.
MB: For everyone involved, for every journalist, it was a life-changing event, and so everyone has written about that day. We had a lot of biographies and scientific papers — an engineer wrote a book about the studio complex set-up. So, we had a lot of research material and in that research, we found a lot about Roone, a pioneer who reinvented live sports broadcasting. He invented the instant replay and the use of the handheld camera.
It was Roone who said, "We have to make a hero's journey. We have to get to know those people. We have to draw the viewer in and give them the context of whom these people are." He'd already played around with that, and he had those tools ready, and as you say, he was ready to play with politics a little as a storytelling element. Then they used all those tools he invented for that live broadcast, and that's where it started to get really complicated.
That was something that felt timely to us because the questions they had to ask themselves are the questions journalists today have to ask themselves. And we all have to ask ourselves these questions because I have a smartphone, and I'm on social media. Something I took away from working on this movie was to rethink the media and news coverage, and how I am a part of it.
PR: This may be digressing, but if we consider a filmmaker like Martin Scorsese, who has made critically acclaimed and popular gangster films, there are moral questions about depicting this violent lifestyle. And with the mainstream news media, the types of questions which confronted the ABC journalists are still relevant in our politically divisive world.
MB: You're totally right, but we mustn't stop asking them. If you make a movie that's based on true events, and it's about journalism and ethical questions, then you have to lead with those questions, because they haven't been answered yet. It's good for all of us to still have these questions in mind.
There are different kinds of movies. There are movies that try to give answers and there are movies that try to ask questions. I'm always more drawn to the second type. When I leave the theatre or the cinema, if I have a couple of questions in my head, then I'm part of that conversation. But if I'm satisfied because everything was cleared up before the credits rolled, then it's as if I'm thinking, 'Okay, let's have dinner.'
PR: September 5 must have been a challenging script to write because you had a lot of research to incorporate, and you can see how those layers of the performances, cinematography and editing bring the film together as a cohesive whole.
MB: It was a challenge, but it was a good one. When Tim and I started we decided to write it because we'd come across Geoffrey Mason in the research, who told his 22 hours in such a thrilling way that Tim immediately thought of it like a submarine movie. He said, "This is inside a closed environment — the monitors and windows are the eyes to the outside." I thought that was great.
I started to write, and I always try to write fast because when I do a lot of research, I'm filled up with all of this real life material, and I need to feel like it's alive. Tim was good at finding the core of every scene and also the rhythm, so that it became a page turner. Then Alex [David] joined us - we were three writers. In the beginning, Alex was there to translate, and then he discussed the character arcs and use of certain words from his American storytelling perspective.
This is a movie about a team effort, and it was done as a team. So, this is an example of when people meet, they have certain strengths and they combine them. That was something which was eye-opening for me on this project.
PR: The interesting contradiction is that September 5 is claustrophobic and yet it isn't. Yes, they're stuck in the control room and adjoining spaces, but it's going out to how many millions of people.
MB: Yes, and because we had access to the original blueprints of the whole studio complex, an interesting thing we learned is there was a door and a window in the control room. But they were sitting with their backs to it, focused on the monitors. That's only a small detail, but to us that was interesting because it's about what we send out, not what we see with our own eyes. And in Roone's biography, he wrote that when the helicopters flew off, he ran out of the studio because, in his words, "For once in my lifetime, I wanted to see history not through a lens."
It's interesting that the professional journalists had to watch everything through a lens, but maybe there was a moment when they just wanted to be a human being and see it with their own eyes. That's a core theme of the film — what do we do with the pictures that we send out into the world?
PR: In this pressure situation, the German translator Marianne Gebhardt is able to elevate herself as a woman in a male-dominated space. And yet, this is almost an effortless aspect of the film, that sees gender and hierarchy neutralised by the situation.
MB: Thank you for bringing that up. Marianne is not based on a real character like Geoff, Roone or Marvin Bader. She's based on many characters. German translators were provided by the Olympic Games to the networks and the interesting thing is the ABC crew grabbed every German they could grab — even Roone's driver had to get some information and translate it.
Like you said, gender or hierarchy wasn't important any longer and that's how you can feel what an extreme situation it was. It was a case of whatever helps us we do that, and that adds to the pressure and the rush you can feel.
PR: Picking up on your point about Roone wanting to see beyond the lens, a film ceases to be the filmmakers once it is shared with the audience. Similarly to the themes of September 5, the images a filmmaker creates are set free and open to interpretation. The contradiction here is that images are created with deliberate intent, and yet their makers have a lack of actual control over them.
MB: It's frightening; it's fascinating, and it's great because you don't know what the person brings to the cinema. One aspect of art is that you can reflect on your own life and your own thoughts on it, and if it's clever, then it gives you the space to do this. Tim and I are always trying to do that, so it gives you enough space to be in that room and have your own thoughts because there's a lot you will bring to this movie when you're sitting there in the cinema. So, you need room to think about it, and I don't mean room, because it's a very fast movie. Instead, there are no straight answers, and I really like that you thought of that aspect when you watched the movie.
September 5 has been nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 2025 Oscars. It was released theatrically in the US on 13th December 2024, before its expanded release on the 17th January 2025. It was released theatrically in the UK on the 6th February 2025.
