‘September 5’ Review: Tim Fehlbaum’s Take on the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre Fails in its Presentation of Palestinian People | Venice

In 1972, Munich hosted the Summer Olympic Games. At the time, Germany was separated into two factions; East Germany, under the influence of a communist party and West Germany, mostly controlled by the German Democratic Republic. Munich fell under West Germany, and they were eager to show a more progressive Germany less than 30 years on from the holocaust, with their official motto translating to “the cheerful Games.” However the games were overshadowed by what came to be referred to as the Munich Massacre, in which nine members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by members of Black September, a Palestinian militant group. As opposed to Steven Spielberg’s Munich, which spanned fictional events following the massacre, the Tim Fehlbaum directed September 5 covers the media team that chose what to broadcast during it, in what the film refers to as “the first time a terrorist attack was broadcast live.”

September 5 opens with a news bulletin on how the Olympic Games is being broadcast for the first time to hundreds of millions of people across the world, predominantly those in America as the ‘bird’ in the sky – a satellite – takes their footage and sends it soaring across space to TV sets across the USA. The bulletin contains the Israeli flag waving freely, a swift reminder to German audiences of their existence and of their history with the jewish community. In dimly lit and strangely smoke-free rooms at the ABC broadcast hub in Munich, a mere 100 feet from the Olympic Village, gunshots echo out. The news begins rippling through the night crew of naive wet behind the ears director Geoff (John Magaro), German translator Marianne (Leonie Benesch) and operations manager Marv (Ben Chaplin) as they begin scrambling to source what has truly happened; they are journalists first and foremost so need a source to confirm that it was indeed gunshots they heard. Confirmation dribbles through German radio and police scanners that “guerilla Arabs” have killed two of the Israeli Olympic team and taken others hostage. This team, alongside the more experienced daytime director Roone (Peter Sarsgaard), cobbles together some reporters – and a junior assistant – to get over there and begin filming what they see before filtering their information across a global news channel. 

But the ABC studio is within metaphorical touching distance, so they wheel one long lens camera out onto the roof and begin broadcasting live this terrorist threat from 100 feet away and notably out of reach of a grenade’s blast radius. What follows is a pot-boiler of tension, as their live broadcast begins causing chaos to the German police attempting to negotiate with the Palestinians; of whom declare their intentions as that of rescuing 200 Palestinian prisoners from Israel. The film follows this news crew making decisions on what phrasing to use when describing the group – they decide on terrorist but their news anchor Peter (Benjamin Walker) choose to continue using the term “guerilla arab” – along with which shot of the ‘terrorist’ to choose, which source to believe and if the German media, who deliberately wish to save face that it is Jewish people on the end of this, can be trusted in their dispelling of information.

Journalistic integrity is a cornerstone of the profession but we often find it is malleable to political beliefs. Media can become propaganda when it used to influence, even accidentally. In 1972, media was used to influence the 900 million people that tuned in to the first live broadcast of a terror attack, their impression of Palestine now clouded by the single image of a masked, gun-wielding guerilla Arab. These terrorists were Palestinian people attempting to free prisoners that were unhoused during the Israeli occupation of Palestine but the media, and the poorly realised September 5, barely engages with this, and outright states it’s intention not to bring up politics. Sarsgaard’s character Roone chastises Geoff for the very idea that politics influence their coverage, stating that their live broadcast is “not about politics, it’s about emotion” when choosing to juxtapose a feature on the holocaust with a Jew winning a medal. 

This is ultimately the major issue with September 5. It is a film that engages with the idea that the people involved in the media make choices, but then refuses to explore anything more than surface-level ideas as these characters are just journeymen attempting to tell a news story. It chooses to be the very media it attempts to criticise by not exploring why these Palestinian terrorists are doing what they’re doing. They are continuing to make the Palestinian people come across as nothing more than “guerilla Arabs.” Fehlbaum and co-writer Moritz Binder’s script seems to be more interested in the German characters apologising for the holocaust – even having a Jewish character say to a German that of course it wasn’t you, in relation to her parents involvement – than exploring anything to do with the Palestinian people that this news team are covering.

The film is technically proficient as cinematographer Markus Forderer shoots the flick in dramatically dusky tones and the work from editor Hansjörg Weißbrich make this newsroom drama clip along at a brisk pace, even if it was a surprise to find out after that it was not a two hour drama but instead had a 91 minute runtime. Cast members Magaro and Benesch get the most conflict out of their characters, while Chaplin’s Jewish operations manager lends the most thematic gravitas to proceedings as he struggles to acclimatise to being mere miles from a concentration camp. Though he, or any character in the ensemble, really captures a crisis of morality that should emerge from their actions, especially when compared to the Mossad agents in Munich. There is a question to the ambivalence of killing innocent lives in Spielberg’s drama while here, the death of the Palestinians are approached as an inevitability for their supposedly terrorist actions, even before they commit murder.  

When we watch films, we watch them in context to the world around us. Right now, a genocide is occurring in Palestine. To watch a film like September 5, which tells the tragic story of eleven lost Israeli lives from the perspective of a sports media team thrust into a situation they were unprepared for, while placing the Palestinian antagonists as on-screen blurs, feels gross to witness when we consider the almost immeasurable loss of Palestinian life that is occurring today. We debate about separating art from the artist, but we cannot separate art from politics. When you create media without politics, you are othering those directly affected by your choices. It is how in 1972, Palestinian people were presented to the world as terrorists and in 2024, they are the victims of genocide. The refusal to explore the Israeli-Palestine conflict in September 5, when it is the root cause of the film’s conflict, makes the film feel like propaganda for the othering of Palestinian lives. It is a film that is far too binary in its approach to the Munich Massacre that it ironically, and grossly, falls into the same trap that the media team it depicts did.

Grade: C-

This review is from the 2024 Venice Film Festival where September 5 played in the Orizzonti section. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.