Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The camera rolls in September 5 and you know what’s coming next. The film begins just before dawn in Germany, on the date of the title in 1972, when midway through the Munich Olympics, 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorist group Black September. The result, in the end, was a massacre.It was also a TV landmark: a historic news event broadcast live in the US by ABC, whose cramped studio near the Olympic Village the movie takes us into. With hardworking actors in shirt sleeves, you brace for one of those head-patting salutes to the best of journalism that US film studios sometimes like to make.In fact, the movie goes a different way — to a place of deep unease. We open at 4am, with characters including peppery ABC Sports president Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), middle manager Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) and local translator Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch). The air-con is out. The detail is telling: an instant ding in the shiny surface of technology and progress embodied by this Olympics. Far above, a satellite makes possible a global live broadcast. On the ground, the games are meant to showcase the model West Germany, de-Nazified at last. Then the gunshots start.The shock of the characters morphs in a moment into how to make TV from the crisis. As a terrorist in a ski mask looms into view, a producer exhales. “That’s our opener.” Off-screen, the door opens to a media landscape mutating ever since, a hall of mirrors where violence, tragedy, ratings and journalistic mission collide. “We follow the story,” Arledge orders.The sceptic will glance at September 5 and wonder what role the film might have when the same events have already been relayed in Kevin Macdonald’s 1999 benchmark documentary One Day in September and Steven Spielberg’s 2005 big picture Munich. (I know I did.) But director Tim Fehlbaum makes his movie a vital preface to those tellings: a cautionary tale about how news would be made from now on, in our coming age of endless images. And yet, much to his credit, he also sees us as bright enough to join those dots ourselves. (Likewise, to weigh any parallels with the 2023 taking of Israeli hostages by Hamas.) Plenty about this understated, stripped-back film is a risk. We may even feel distaste that its kinetic urgency is so tied up with the logistics of live TV. What about the victims? With rare subtlety, that is exactly what Fehlbaum invites us to ask. (And when we’re reminded of the actual horror just outside the studio, it is, in control-room parlance, a gut punch.)Ethical questions haunt the movie. And while strong performances abound, no one gives a rousing speech to clarify the murk. Arledge is most animated in a flash of intra-network rivalry. “This is our story and we’re keeping it!” he yells at ABC colleagues.The movie is not a hatchet job. No one in the room is a monster. But the film treats the tenets of good journalism with enough respect to reflect them back at the broadcasters. Check your facts, it says — and be careful what you follow.★★★★★In UK cinemas from February 7 and on US streaming platforms now
