‘September 5’ Filmmaker on Tackling Tragic Event With Tireless Research, “Highest Respect”
Tim Fehlbaum‘s September 5 — a Venice Film Festival world premiere about the terrorist attack that occurred at the 1972 Munich Olympics — is not a documentary. But the filmmaker, who made a mark in science fiction films like The Colony and Hell, treated it like one.
That meant that Fehlbaum and his team spent many months in a tireless research process to discover how the events unfolded, minute-by-minute, while also working with a set and production design team to create an authentic replica of a sports broadcasting facility like the one the ABC Sports team used in Munich on that fateful day, the filmmaker said during a September 5 press conference held in Venice on Thursday afternoon.
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“When the idea came up for us to maybe tell the story [of September 5], it became a research conversation,” Fehlbaum said, adding that conversations with an eyewitness named Geoffrey Mason (played in the film by John Magaro) fueled the storyline and laid the foundation for how the project unfolded. He was also guided by a goal of approaching the sensitive subject “with the highest respect” possible.
First-time German screenwriter Moritz Binder penned the screenplay with Fehlbaum and co-writer Alex Davis. The 94-minute film is set in Munich inside the production hub of ABC Sports as the outlet is covering the 1972 Summer Olympics. The sports broadcasting team was forced to pivot from routine coverage of the games to breaking hard news when a group of Israeli athletes were taken hostage by eight members of the Palestinian militant organization Black September. The terrorists infiltrated the Olympic Village where they took the hostages and killed two in quick order. Nine others were captured only to be tragically killed at the airport during a failed rescue attempt.
Rather than tell the story from inside the hostage situation, September 5 focuses on the broadcasting team’s experience and high-level decision-making in navigating a tense and tragic developing story that was seen by an estimated one billion people at the time. It had implications on live broadcasting and raised questions on the value of showing a view of the terrorists in real-time that reverberated for decades that followed. The full broadcast spanned 22 hours.
The film mixes in documentary footage from the incident as well as the real ABC Sports broadcast from the time, scenes that feature iconic anchor Jim McKay. The screenwriters also partnered with eyewitness Mason who provided his own recollections.
“We are used to following an event like this on a phone,” Fehlbaum said at the press conference. “We thought it could be interesting to take a step back to see how it was covered like this for the first time.” He added that while technology has changed, the questions a situation like this raises are still the same.
Other key pieces of research included chapters in the memoirs by McKay as well as Roone Arledge (played by Sarsgaard) and conversations with Sean McManus, the CBS Sports chief who is the son of McKay and who happened to be in Munich that day as a teenager.
“The original footage was a great source of research material,” Fehlbaum continued, adding that they also received police files and footage that allowed them to put together a view into what likely happened both in Munich and in the control room that day. Speaking of the control room, Fehlbaum and his collaborators, such as production designer Julian Wagner, sought to recreate a control room featuring monitors and tech of that time period. “Real devices and as authentic as possible,” he said. “Everything should be working.”
The ensemble cast features Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Zinedine Soualem, Georgina Rich, Corey Johnson, Marcus Rutherford, Daniel Adeosun, Benjamin Walker, Ferdinand D?rfler and Benesch, a breakout and award-winning star from The Teachers’ Lounge. The film boasts an impressive roster of producers led by Sean Penn with Philipp Trauer, Thomas W?bke, John Ira Palmer, John Wildermuth and Fehlbaum.
Asked how he related to the subject matter, Chaplin talked about his relationship to the current news landscape. “As a consumer of news, I worry about it all the time. It’s probably the thing I worry most about: How do we sustain as a species in a post-truth age where we can’t share objective facts? I relate to news coverage with great fear and worry.”
Co-star Leonie Benesch (The Teachers’ Lounge, Babylon Berlin) also weighed in. “I am a little addicted to news. I love following a news feed and that is something that helped me tap into what probably happened that night,” said the actress, who plays a translator with a key role as the events unfold. “I don’t love that I read news first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.”
In a director’s statement released to the press ahead of the festival, Fehlbaum said he was drawn to the “special angle” of the film’s story as it focused on the role of the media. “By focusing on the broadcaster’s perspective, we are confronted with the moral, ethical, professional, and ultimately psychological dilemmas of journalists: Can we share information before it is confirmed? Can a live broadcast include acts of violence? What is the role of media and journalism, and what is the line between news and spectacle?” he says in the statement.
In the final moments of today’s press conference, Fehlbaum was asked by a reporter about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, a relevant question that speaks to the historical nature of the terrorist attack and how their bad blood continues to boil today. “It’s a very important question,” Fehlbaum said though he said since their film is based on historical events, they did not alter the storyline or let it impact what is seen onscreen. “The movie only shows the media perspective and that is our approach.”
September 5 will have a world premiere on the Lido on Thursday.
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